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About Google Book Search Google's mission is to organize the world's information and to make it universally accessible and useful. Google Book Search helps readers discover the world's books while helping authors and publishers reach new audiences. You can search through the full text of this book on the web at|http: //books .google .com/I I ADDRESSES EDUCATIONAL AND PATRIOTIC Syr^yr^'^^^^^ ADDRESSES i:;i TCATIONAL AND PATRIOTIC BY CYRUS NORTHROP. LL. D. » PRK8IDBNT OF TBK UNIVKKSITT OF MINNESOTA • » MINNKAPOLIS THE H. W. WILSON COMPANY 1910 ". ^ -' ^ w^ -( n\£. COPYRIGHT 1910 CYRUS NORTHROP •_• ••• .•••,;!• t ,•• ••• •••••• • • PREFACE These addresses are published, not because I sup- pose that they are a contribution to human knowl- edge, but simply because friends have asked me to publish them. Most of the addresses delivered by me when I was connected with Yale College were un- written and can not therefore be reproduced. Only two of the addresses in this volume belong to that period. Of the others, several were extemporaneous and they are printed in this volume as they were re- ported by stenographers. The address on Lincoln delivered at a banquet of the Loyal Legion in St. Paul, and the addresses on the day of President McKinley's funeral, at the banquet to Vice-President Roosevelt, at the unveiling of the statue of Governor John 8. Pillsbury, and at the banquet in honor of Dr. James E. Hosmer, were all extemporaneous. They all bear the marks of extemporaneous delivery, but they may not be on that account the less interesting. The other addresses in this volume were prepared for special occasions and I believe fitted the occasions fairly well. They were doubtless more interesting when delivered than they will be in a book published years after the special occasion for them has passed. But even as they are, I hope they may not be without interest to the friends for whose sake they are committed to print. CYRUS NORTHROP. 8 CONTENTS Yale Bicentennial Address .... 1 The Nation's Centennial 28 Eloquence and the Law 51 The Legal Pbofession as a Consebyatiye Force in Our Bepubuc 87 Inaugural Address as President of the Uni- versity of Minnesota 113 The Dissemination of Educated Men . . 142 The Education Which Our Country Needs . 171 Some Lessons from Our Ck)UNTRY's History . 193 Some Advice to Toung Physicuns . . 215 Ideals for Boys 231 The Work of the Teacher 245 George Washington 283 Benjamin Franklin 301 Three Great Presidents 321 Greater Whitman C!ollbge .... 347 The Future of Our Country .... 363 American Progress 371 Agricultural Education . . . . . 393 X CONTENTS Address on Agrigultubb 419 James Kendall Hosmeb 435 A Response 443 Lincoln, Statesman and Oratob . . . 447 Roosevelt : The College Man in Politics . . 455 President McKinley 459 Acceptance op Statue of John S. Pillsbury FOR THE University 465 John Sargent Pillsbury 469 Congratulations 475 Memorlil Day Address 481 Commencement Address 505 » YALE'S RELATION TO THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE COUNTRY* Mr. President^ Brethren of Yale, Ladies and Gentle- men: The subject aBfidgned to me, ^^Yale in its Relation to the Development of the CJountry," is too large for adequate consideration in a brief address. I shall omit all allusion to the moral and industrial devel* opment, and confine my remarks to a very brief con- sideration of Yale's relation to the political develop- ment of the country, and a somewhat more extended review of Yale's relation to the educational develop- ment. While Yale men have gone largely into politics and have done manly service in the ranks, and while many of them have attained to distinguished posi- tions to which they have done honor and in which they have been influential, it is not easy to say to what extent the political policy of our country has been influenced directly by Yale. The college had four graduates in the convention which framed our National Constitution, William Bamuel Johnson, William Livingston, Jared Ingersoll, and Abraham Baldwin, all of them good and able men. It has ♦Delivered at the Yale Bicentennial Celebration, New Haven, Con- necticut, October 22nd, 1901. <> YALE'S RELATION TO THE to-day three members of the Supreme Court of the United States : David Josiah Brewer, Henry Billings Brown, both of the class of 1856, and Oeorge Shiras, of the class of 1853. These men, all eminently worthy to hold the high position which they occupy, have been called upon to decide questions of the great- est importance, and their decisions have probably affected the policy of the country more positively and permanently than has any other distinctive Yale in- fluence. The great work of pacifying the Philippine Islands and bringing them under beneficial civil gov- ernment and, let us hope, preparing them for self- government under conditions most favorable to lib- erty, has very wisely been assigned to a distinguished graduate of Yale, Hon. William H. Taft, of the class of 1878. Judge Taft has done so well whatever he has undertaken to do, and has already so far suc- ceeded in bringing order out of chaos in the Philip- pines, as to inspire the utmost confidence in his ulti- mate complete success, and to awaken a conscious- ness in the nation that he may, at some time, be called to fill a higher position than he has yet attained. No graduate of Yale has ever been elected to the office of president of the United States, but the Yalen- sians will not complain so long as the country can have for its president a patriot and scholar like Theo- dore Roosevelt A very respectable number of Yale graduates have been senators and representatives in Congress. The representatives are too numerous to mention. Of the senators, it will be sufficient to name John Caldwell Calhoun, of South Carolina ; Truman Smith, Roger S. Baldwin, and Jabez W. Huntington, of Con- DEVELOPMENT OF THE COUNTRY 3 necticut ; John DaviB, Julius Rockwell, and Henry L. Dawes, of Massachusetts; John M. Clayton and An- thony Higgins, of Delaware; William M. Evarts and Ghauncey M. Depew, of New York ; Gtoorge E. Badger, of North Carolina ; Randall L. Gibson, of Louisiana ; William Morris Stewart, of Nevada, and Frederick T. Dubois, of Idaho. All of these have exerted a posi- tive influence on either the politics or the legislation of the country. Most of them have been men of com- manding influence in the Senate, and I am glad to say in the language of another, ^^All of them have been honest and sincere, and in no instance have they betrayed the trust rei)osed in them." Yale has furnished the country with a number of distinguished diplomats, of whom Eugene Schuyler, of the class of 1859, though not the most prominent or distinguished, was, I think, the most distinctly representative. Edwards Pierrepont, of the class of 1837, and Wayne MacVeagh and Andrew D. White, both of the class of 1853, are among the most dis- tinguished of Yale representatives at foreign courts. But the real history of a country is not the record of its great men either in war or in peace. It is rather an account of the development and progress of the people; and especially so in this country, where the people's will can govern and ultimately does govern, and where the wisest leaders, before they speak, listen for the voice of the people. The hope of the country is not in the astuteness and ability of its great men, but in the virtue, intelligence, and good sense of the great body of the people. An institution of learning whose influence, educational and ethical, has permeated the great mass of the people in all parts of the country, affecting alike YALE'S RELATION TO THE their ideas, their mode of thinking, their habits of life, their conceptions of public and private virtue, of patriotism and of religion, has impressed itself upon the character of the nation in a more permanent way and with more wide-reaching results than an institution whose chief glory is the development of a few party leaders. Probably the man of real genius never owes his success entirely to his college. The greatest men of the world have not got their inspiration from the college curriculum nor the college faculty. Bome men have been great without being trained at col- lege, and some have been great in spite of being trained at college. The glory which has been shed on some colleges because eminent men have graduat- ed there, is not to be despised ; but it is largely acci- dental. Miami University did not make Benjamin Harrison; nor did Dartmouth make Daniel Web- ster; nor did Bowdoin make Nathaniel Hawthorne; nor did Tale make John C. Calhoun. These men would have been men of note no matter where they might be graduated. The spirit of man in them was a candle of the Lord, and they could not but shine. Some of the econdmic teachings of Yale, like those of all the colleges, have been at variance with the prevailing policy of the country. On no im- portant question of national policy has the influence of Tale been greater than on the financial question, which in one form or another has agitated the nation for many years and notably in the last two presi- dential elections. The sturdy fidelity to what the college regarded as sound principles, contributed in no small degree to the national verdict upon that question. DEVELOPMENT OF THE COUNTRY 5 The attitude of Yale College as regards public affairs has generally been one of protest against im- pending mistakes and dangers, rather than one of effective advocacy of a positive policy of its own. The college has criticised, regulated, warned, rather than originated and led. It has never been intensely partisan, but its attitude has been a good deal like that of the late Bev. Dr. Leonard Bacon. Dr. Bacon was a free trader, but he always voted the Whig or Bepublican ticket. He said he had been wanting for years to get a chance to vote the Democratic ticket, and so emphasize his views on the tariff; but the Democrats always did some foolish thing or other just before election that compelled him to vote against them. Yale has been a good deal like that. Voting one ticket while wanting to vote the other, because its conservative critical attitude led it to emphasize party errors that the more enthusiastic partisan, in his confidence in the general excellence of party policy, would have overlooked. When the Kansas-Nebraska Bill was passed, Yale thundered against it in no doubtful manner; and Taylor, Silliman, Woolsey, Thacher, and others, fear- lessly voiced her sentiments. The college was no less outspoken for freedom and union when both were en- dangered by the Oreat Bebellion. More than five hundred fifty of Yale's graduates, and two hundred of her students who were not graduates, enlisted as soldiers in the war for the Union. The noble oration of Horace Bushnell at the Oommemorative Celebration, July 26th, 1865, extols in fitting terms the patriotism of these soldiers and voices Yale's gratitude to them for their unselfish devotion to country and to freedom. 6 YALE'S RELATION TO THE I can not even now, after the lapse of nearly forty years, recall the names of the men who died npon the battlefield, withont an overpowering emo- tion which nothing but the events connected with the great struggle for union and liberty has the power to excite. Theodore Winthrop, of the class of 1848, James C. Bice of 1854, Edward F. Blake of 1858, Diodate C. Hannahs of 1859, Edward Carrington of 1859, Henry W. Gamp of 1860, and my own class- mates of 1857, Butler, Dutton, Griswold, Porter, Boberts, and I might well add Drake and Croxton, — ^it will be another Yale than this, and another coun- try than ours when you and the hundred other schol- ars of Yale who died for the republic, and the six hundred who lived to see the end of the contest, are either forgotten or are not held in remembrance as the noblest of Yale's sons. I pass on now to consider Yale's relation to the educational development of the country. Heredity of blood is much less complex than heredity of mind. Genealogical tables are sufficiently intricate but they are simplicity itself in comparison with tables of the mind's ancestry showing the forces which have operated to produce and invigorate it. No one can possibly estimate the results which come from the work of the successful teacher, in moulding the char- acter and quickening the intellect of his students, because the influence of this work goes on, in future years, in widening circles that at last reach the limits of the country and even of the world. With- out any doubt many of the men before me to-day owe something for what they are to the teaching and in- spiration of the first President Dwight, who put his own impress on Yale College, and in no small degree DEVELOPMENT OF THE COUNTRY 7 on other colleges, and sent out into the world as students men who have made his influence a con- tinuous power for more than a century. So too a modest, courteous, scholarly gentleman, a graduate of Yale College, teaches his classes for years in Williston Seminary, each year sending a score or more of well-prepared boys to the principal colleges of New England. His life and influence are not such as the historian will take notice of. He has fought no battles. He has led no great parties to victory. He has outlined no grand policy for the country. Perhaps he has not even written a book. But the influence of Josiah Clark, of the class of 1833, did not cease when his life was ended here; and the Williston boys of his day will carry to their graves the memory of that manly and inspiring teacher; and if any of them have done good work in life, they will not hesitate to attribute it, in no small degree, to his teaching and the inspiration of his life. Two very eminent Yale men who have had much to do with progress in education in this country in a certain way, are Noah Webster, of the class of 1778, and Joseph E. Worcester, of the class of 1811, both lexicographers, to whose works most of the American people who are at all particular about their speech have been accustomed to refer as the final authority. The universal presence in schools in former times of Webster's spelling book and its disappearance in these later days will largely explain the increased illiteracy of college students in these days. There is nothing which the secondary schools need so much as a revival of Webster's spelling book, if we may believe published statements respecting the deficiency of students in the elements of English, a deficiency 8 YALE'S RELATION TO THE which is not always removed by extensive courses in English literature after students enter college. The great educational work done by Yale is of course the direct work of training its own students. With few exceptions the graduates of Yale have recognized the training they received as valuable and have been grateful to the college for it That all chairs have not been filled with equal ability, that the same chair has not been filled always with uni- form ability, that some professors have been better teachers than scholars and some better scholars than teachers, and that the undergraduates have always known just how great the faculty was, individually and collectively, every graduate of the college is per- fectly aware. It can not be doubted that the work done here for two centuries has fitted men well for the struggle of life, and that most of the graduates of the college have been resi>ectable and respected in the communities where they have lived and have been recognized as men of influence. But who can tell the story of their lives? In the Triennial Cata- logue of Yale the names of about 20,000 graduates are recorded. Of these about 900 have held positions in Yale or some other college; about 3,000 have some special record for public office or work; and about 16,000 have no record beyond their academic degree. Who can tell how much the country or the world owes to these 20,000 men? The number is very small compared with the many millions of people who have lived in the two centuries just gone. And yet I do not doubt that in some way, direct or indirect, the influence of Yale has extended to a large part of these millions, affecting their education or their ideas or their principles or their lives. DEVELOPMENT OF THE COUNTRY 9 It would be invidious to mention the names of distinguished scholars who have contributed to build up the educational work of Yale and make it the i>o- tent factor it has been in the education of the coun- trjy because it would be impossible to name all. You of former generations and you of the present gen- eration will readily call to mind men who by their learning, vigor, and culture did much more for you than merely instruct. The list is a long and noble one of which no Yalensian can fail to be proud. Though great men have died, great men have been found to take their places; and the faculty to-day will not suffer in comparison with the faculties of other days. The roll of presidents is a famous one; but how- ever much we may admire the former presidents, of whom the men in this audience have had personal knowledge, Day, Woolsey, Porter, Dwight, or any of the earlier men, no one doubts that Arthur T. Had- ley, son and intellectual heir to the ever-to-be-re- membered James Hadley, is at least the peer of the best of them. Most of the Yale men who have engaged in the work of education have had on them, all their lives, the stamp of Yale College, and have cherished the Yale ideas and have followed the Yale methods. No other single word describes what these are so well as ^^conservatism." They have held fast to what was good and been slow to enter new and untried paths. The education that in the past had succeeded in giv- ing men i)ower, has seemed to them good enough for the future ; and they have been slow to accept knowl- edge without discipline, or culture without power. As a result the manliness, force, and independence 1 0 YALE'S RELATION TO THE which particularly characterize the Yale student, have been reproduced throughout the country by the permeating influence of Yale training. "A boat race," said a newspaper correspondent last summer, "is never lost by Yale till the race is ended." He meant by that that every particle of strength would be ex- erted by a Yale crew to the last stroke, so that the race would finally be won if it were possible, as it generally is. It is that resolute determination to do one's best in a manly way everywhere in life, with- out affectation or snobbery or parasitical sycophancy or the undue worship of ancestors, that is the char- acteristic mark of Yale men, and that is sure to appear wherever Yale men teach. And where have they not taught? North, South, East, and West, Yale educators have been at work founding colleges and academies and schools, formulating the prin- ciples of public education and making the policy of new states more liberal even than that of the mother New England, stimulating public interest in new methods and building up graded systems of popular education with all the varied institutions needed for its protection. The earlier development of this w^ork took the form of attempts to establish in new terri- tory colleges as like Yale as possible. Princeton, Columbia, Dartmouth, and Hamilton, may be taken as examples. "The first three presidents of Prince- ton were Yale men, and to the efforts of the first presi- dent, Jonathan Dickinson, Y'ale 1706, more than to the efforts of any other man, are due the founding and early development of Princeton University. The work of Aaron Burr, the second president, Yale 1735, confirmed the Yale tradition in Princeton, and the name of Jonathan Edwards, the third president, DEVELOPMENT OF THE COUNTRY 11 Yale 1720," according to Hallock, "contributed more to the fame of Princeton on the continent, short as was his presidency, than the name of any other official connected with its history." The first presi- dent of King's College, now Columbia, was Dr. Sam- uel Johnson, Yale 1714. He was the only Episcopa- lian clergyman in Connecticut, was highly esteemed by Benjamin Franklin, and was urged by him to be- come president of the institution founded by him in Philadelphia, afterward the University of Pennsyl- vania. When King's College was reorganized as Co- lumbia, William Samuel Johnson, Yale 1744, a dis- tinguished United States Senator from Connecticut and an eminent la^'yer, became the first president. He was the first gi*aduate of Yale to receive an honorary degree in law, having been made a Doctor of Civil Law by Oxford in 1776. Dartmouth College had for its founder and first president. Dr. Eleazar Wheelock, Yale 1733, for thirty-five years pastor of a church in Lebanon, Connecticut. The story of his work for the Indians and the development of his In- dian School into Dartmouth College, is too well known to need repetition here. The Y^ale stamp has al- ways been on Dartmouth, and the spirit of the two institutions has been, and is, not unlike. Hamilton College was established by charter of May 26, 1812. It was founded by a Yale graduate, Samuel Kirkland, Y'ale 1768, who drew his inspiration from Eleazar Wheelock, Yale 1733, president of Dartmouth. Like Dartmouth, Hamilton was the outgrowth of Chris- tian work for the Indians. For fifty years of its existence practically all the presidents and pro- fessors of Hamilton College were Yale graduates. The Ordinance of 1787, providing for the govern- 12 YALE'S RELATION TO THE ment of the territory northwest of the river Ohio^ contained, among other remarkable articles, a re- quirement of public provision for education ; its lan- guage is: "Religion, morality, and knowledge being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged." That ordinance has been most faithfully obeyed within the great region to which it applied, every state carved out of the territory having made noble provision for public education from the common school to the university. "Ohio University, estab- lished at Athens, Ohio, in 1802, bears the double dis- tinction of being the first college in the United States founded upon a land endowment from the national government, and also of being the oldest college in the Northwest Territory." Dr. Manasseh Cutler was the father of the university. He was a Yale man of the class of 1765, and a minister of the Gospel, pastor in Ipswich, Massachusetts. He drew up the plan for the college and made it as much like Yale as he could, but the legislature modified his plan and assumed large powers in the election of trustees, so that Ohio University, though a child of Yale, did not ultimately resemble Yale as much as it resembled a state univer- sity. But that was not because Dr. Manasseh Cutler had forgotten the character of his Alma Mater or had broken away from his Yale conservatism, but simply because other infiuences were too strong for him to control. Yale infiuence was thus the first to start higher education in the great Northwest Terri- tory, and the institution founded by Cutler still lives and prospers with as many students as Yale herself had when I was an undergraduate. DEVELOPMENT OF THE COUNTRY 13 Twenty-four years later, in 1826, when northern Ohio had been well settled by good people from Con- necticut, Western Beserve College secured its charter. It was the first college established in the northern half of Ohio. The project to establish it originated with a Connecticut clergyman, Bev. Caleb Pitkin, a Yale graduate of the class of 1802. The institution was modeled after Yale, not only in respect to the course of study, but also in respect to its governing board, a majority, as at Yale, being clergymen; and of this majority in the beginning four out of seven were Yale men. The first president who was a grad- uate of a college was Rev. George E. Pierce, D. D., a Yale graduate of the class of 1816. Of him it is said that ^^he was thoroughly imbued with the Connecti- cut idea of a college.^' That means the Yale idea. Most of the faculty of Western Beserve College were Yale men, and *'for a number of years the institu- tion was modeled upon Yale College, in the minut- est particular." After this statement it is perhaps needless to add, in the language of the president of another Ohio college, that "from the first. West- ern Beserve has been one of the very best colleges in the country." Graduates of Western Beserve are now at the head of several of the most impor- tant departments of Yale; while several of the pres- idents and many of the professors of Western Be- serve have been Yale men. Henry L. Hitchcock, of the class of 1832, Carroll Cutler, of the class of 1854, both presidents, and Henry N. Day, of the class of 1828, Elias Loomis, of the class of 1830, Nathan P. Seymour, of the class of 1834, and Lem- uel S. Potwin, of the class of 1854, may be men- tioned, not as a complete list, but as a sample of 14 YALE'S RELATION TO THE the Yale men who have made Western Reserve — now expanded into a university — the excellent col- lege it has always been. Illinois College was established in 1829 at Jack- sonville, in the limits of w^hat is now the imperial state of Illinois. All the influences leading to the establishment of this college originated at Yale or with Yale men. The promoters of the enterprise "followed the advice of the president and profes- sors of Yale College, and these venerable advisers warned against subjecting the institution to polit- ical or denominational control." Rev. Dr. Edward Beecher, Yale 1831, was the first president. Rev. Dr. Julian M. Sturtevant, Yale 1826, was his suc- cessor, and his presidency was long and prosper- ous. The college was founded when Illinois had no colleges and had a population of only 160,000. Yale put her impress on the young state and has kept it there to a greater or less degree ever since. Beloit College was founded in southern Wiscon- sin in 1848. All of its first faculty of two were Yale men. Its first president was Rev. Dr. Aaron L. Cha- pin, Yale 1837, who held the office for thirty-six years, till 1886. To-day as ever, Yale is represented in the faculty of Beloit. The ideas of the founders of Beloit were the same old conservative Yale ideas which have so generally characterized Yale educators whether at home or abroad. As the Beloit men themselves expressed it, "Education was understood to mean chiefly a self-development of the individual under training, to a true self-possession and com- mand of his best faculties." To-dav Beloit and Yale are alike presided over by one of their own bril- liant graduates; wiiat Arthur T. Hadley is to Yale, DEVELOPMENT OF THE COUNTRY 15 Edward D. Eaton is to Beloit ; and, if I were seeking in the whole West for a young Yale, I should go at once to Beloit; and I have no hesitation in saying that there is no denominational or independent non- sectarian college in the West that is better than Beloit. President Eaton is a graduate of one of the departments of Yale. I have chosen to speak of these colleges, not be- cause Yale men were to be found in their faculties, — there are many colleges all over the country that can not be named to-day of which the same is true, — but because these institutions seem to have been created as well as developed by Yale influence, and in their career they have largely affected the character of the great Northwest, all of them having been estab- lished most opportunely by Yale influence within the territory dedicated to freedom and education and religion by the Ordinance of 1787. Passing from the consideration of institutions in- tended to reproduce Yale, I come next to consider the work of a few men who have been notable as educators. Foremost among /these, worthy to be classed with Horace Mann in consideration of the originality of his plans and the extended scope of his work, was Henry Barnard, of the class of 1830, who closed his long career of usefulness in this first year of the twentieth century — a man whose influ- ence upon the schools and the secondary education of the country was so pronounced that the largest educational convention of the year, with its ten thou- sand teachers from all parts of the country, fitly paused in its deliberations to celebrate at one entire session the remarkable achievements of this distin- guished educator. He was a man of original ideas. 16 YALE'S RELATION TO THE He believed in progress. He never rested satisfied with what most of the world was ready to accept as the ultimate attainment. For him there was always something better further on; and the great army of educators, good and bad alike, were compelled at last to follow his leading. And he is not the only one who has gone out from Yale and has done a broader educational work than that outlined by her traditional policy. Indeed it may be confidently asserted that the work done by Yale graduates as educators outside of New Haven, in recent years, has shown a much less close conformity to the con- servative ideas of Yale than that done in the first half of. the century. Too much honor can not be given to Daniel C. Gilman, of the class of 1862, first president of Johns Hopkins. He went out from Yale to assume the presidency of the University of California, and, after some years of vigorous work in which he succeeded in giving form, purpose, and life to that university, he was called to take up a new work in Baltimore. Discarding the traditions of the old colleges of the country, he set himself to the task, not of building up another rival college for undergraduates, but of establishing a genuine university in which the graduates of the best col- leges of the land could advance in knowledge beyond the limits of all the colleges, under men distinguished for their original investigations and for their great attainments in the subjects which they undertook to teach. How great his success was you all know. How much the old colleges are indebted to him for a new impulse and for his grand leadership in cre- ating a real university, the faculties of those colleges very well know; and how great a service he ren* DEVELOPMENT OF THE COUNTRY 17 dered to the country can be witnessed by hosts of bright graduates of Johns Hopkins filling most im- portant positions in most of the leading colleges of the conntry, and bringing to their work a new in- spiration derived from great teachers and new meth- ods of scientific investigation. And among the great men whom Oilman gathered around him with a judg- ment that was almost faultless, we are proud to name one of yesterday's orators, Dr. William H. Welch, the most distinguished i>athologist and bac- teriologist of our country. The direct influence upon the colleges of our country exerted by Johns Hopkins, planned and administered by Dr. Oilman, can hard- ly be overestimated. The methods of study and the learning of that university are being reproduced from the Atlantic to the Pacific in every institution that has money enough to secure graduates of Johns Hop- kins for its faculty. A number of American col- leges have thrown aside the bands which compressed them and have expanded into genuine universities. But it was Daniel C Oilman who led the way, and every man who cares for progress in educational work and for the highest learning will acknowledge that the United States owes a debt of gratitude to Dr. Oilman for the work which he has done outside of Yale. President Oilman has been doctored by more universities and colleges than any other graduate of Yale — ^indeed any college that has not conferred the doctorate on Oilman is ipso facto not really re- spectable— ^but he is still in excellent health and is even now ready to take up and to carry forward successfully another very important educational work as director of the Washington Memorial Asso- ciation at the Capital. 18 YALE'S RELATION TO THE I recall another name worthy to be mentioned here with especial honor, the name of a man not lack- ing in brilliancy, but whose career has been wrought out by such patient and faithful work, that no man ought to feel anything but joy at the success which he has attained. I refer to Hon. William T. Harris, of the class of 1858, the accomplished United States Commissioner of Education. The highest education- al work of the country is undoubtedly done in the colleges; but the greatest work is done in the pub- lic schools. It is in these schools that the great body of citizens of the republic are being trained, and the future of the country, so far as respects its peace and order and industrial prosperity, is dei)endent on til is work far more than on the work of the col- leges, except so far as the work of the colleges tells on the work of the schools. The teachers in these schools are numbered by the hundreds of thousands. And a man who can teach the teachers, giving them alike new conceptions of their work and new meth- ods of doing their work, so that all along the line from one end of the country to the other there shall be a pedagogical revival with deepened interest in study on the part of the millions ot scholars, is an educational general, and fit to be commander-in-chief. And William T. Harris is the man. He is a philoso- pher. He founded and has edited the Journal of Speculative Philosophy^ the first journal of the kind in the English language, if the language of philoso- phy can properly be called English; and yet he did not lose his common sense, his clear way of stating things, his power of suggesting new thoughts and plans to teachers and thus getting them out of the ruts, nor his ability to awaken enthusiasm in teach- DEVELOPMENT OF THE COUNTRY 19 era for their work. Above the roar of the mighty flood of so-called pedagogical learning with which onr country is being inundated, the clear good sense and philosophical suggestions of Mr. Harris never fail to reach the understanding of teachers and to prove most helpful to them. His views on education are always sound, and the great multitude who listen to his words and in turn repeat them in substance to a still greater multitude, make his influence on the education of the people beyond calculation. Let him be honored as he deserves for what he has done and w^hat he is doing. The government at Wash- ington honored itself when it made William T. Har- ris Commissioner of Education, and, whatever the party in power, he should be retained in his present office as long as he is able to serve the cause of edu- cation as well as he has done in the past. Of Andrew D. White, of the class of 1853, it is difficult to say whether he is more distinguished as a writer and thinker forty years in advance of his age, or as a diplomatist eminent for his services as the representative of his country at the courts of Russia and Germany, or as an educator blending the purposes of a land grant college with the broad educational ideas of Ezra Cornell and establishing and directing successfully for years that unique in- stitution, Cornell University. Certainly his success in any one of these directions has been sufficient to satisfy the ambition of most men. As president of Cornell he did much to promote new theories of edu- cation and to enlarge the scope of educational in- stitutions. The institution which he created had little resemblance to Yale, but it is not unlike the lead- ing state universities of the West. The conditions 20 YALE'S RELATION TO THE of the endowments were doubtless in a large degree responsible for this; though no one supposes that Dr. White, even if given a free hand, would have attempted to reproduce a Yale at Ithaca. Some- thing new and as far as possible original must be the outcome of his labors, and such in the judg- ment of the Yale faculty at the time was the out- come. As the years go on institutions like men learn from experience and soon drop o£F their unpleasant features and assume new ones that are desirable. This has been the history of Cornell, and, without losing in any degree her individuality, she has at last fallen practically into line with all the success- ful universities of the country. Dr. White gave to her service some of the best years of his life and not an inconsiderable part of his fortune. Chicago University, which, though a mere child in age, has the size, strength, ambitions, and activity of the full grown man, owes its existence and re- sources in the last analysis to the thought and sug- gestion of a Yale graduate; and owes its develop- ment, verve, and originality to its first president. Dr. William R. Harper, who graduated at Yale as doctor of philosophy in 1875, and who, as a professor at Yale, had the opportunity to fill himself with the Yale spirit if he did not secure it as an undergrad- uate at Muskingum College. Perhaps he did, for the first preceptor of that institution was David Put- nam, grandson of General Israel Putnam and a grad- uate of Yale in the class of 1793. Time will not per- mit an extended notice of Dr. Harper's great work in Chicago ; and it is not necessary ; for in these days the University of Chicago is very much in evidence; and the world knows how much the amiable, ver- DEVELOPMENT OF THE COUNTRY 21 satile, and progressiye first president, Dr. William B. Harper, has done for education. I do not claim it oil as a part of the glory of Yale, bnt I do claim an undivided and indiyisible share. I should be glad to pay a just tribute to the work done in Atlanta by Horace Bumstead, of the class of 1861 ; in Tulane University, at New Orleans, by Wil- liam Preston Johnston, of the class of 1852 ; in New York, by Charlton T. Lewis, of the class of 1853; in Bochester, by Augustus H. Strong, of the class of 1857 ; in Cornell, by Moses Coit Tyler, of the class of 1857; in Lincoln and Iowa City, by George E. Mac- Lean, of the theological class of 1874, and by many others whose work is eminently worthy of special men- tion. But I can not further deal with individuals, but must briefly stat« the essential facts. Yale furnished the first president of at least eighteen colleges, and the list is remarkable as much for the distinguished character of the institutions as for their number. I name them: Princeton, Co- lumbia, Dartmouth, University of Georgia, Williams, Hamilton, Kenyon, Illinois, Wabash, University of Missouri, University of Mississippi, University of Wisconsin, Beloit, Chicago, California, Cornell, Johns Hopkins, and Western Beserve. One hundred five graduates of Yale have been president of a college, and at least eighty-five different collies have at some time had a Yale graduate for president. Among these are the state universities of Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, North Dakota, Pennsylvania, Louisiana, Mis- sissippi, Wyoming, Indiana, Georgia, Missouri, Ver- mont, California, and Oregon, and probably others. Among the other colleges, not state institutions, are Dickinson, Middlebury, Hampden-Bidney, Amherst, 22 YALE'S RELATION TO THE Rutgers, Trinity, Lafayette, Transylvania, Tulane, Lake Forest, Pomona, and Whitman, and the Impe- rial University of Japan. More than six hundred grad- uates of Yale have been professors in some college. I wish I could name them, including the distinguished men who have done their work here at Yale, but the mere reading of the names of professors, the chairs they filled and the colleges they served, would re- quire the entire time permitted for this address. No one can doubt that the influence of these men in so many institutions in all parts of our country has contributed much to the advancement of higher learn- ing in all sections, to the elevation of the people, and to the prosperity and true grandeur of our republic. ,The prairies that for hundreds of miles stretch in almost unbroken continuity through the West do not excite in the traveler to the Pacific any special emotion of wonder. Such emotion is excited by the tall peaks further west that tower heavenward, the sentinels of the Rockies, grand, gloomy, solitary, sublime. But the prairies, monotonously level and tame though they are, can feed the world. The largest part of the alumni of the college are like the prairie, inconspicuous but useful. Some of the others are like the foothills, elevated but small, in comparison with Shasta's heaven -piercing head. Comparatively few rise to mountain heights, and hardly one attains the grandeur of the solitary peak to whose majesty the world does homage. But the inconspicuous lives are not always the least useful lives. The* men with the longest record in the tri- ennial catalogue are not necessarily the men who have done the most good. Many a graduate as prin- cipal of an academy, a high school, or a preparatory DEVELOPMENT OF THE COUNTRY 23 school of some kind, has done a work that in its breadth, power, and beneficence is not equaled by the work of more conspicuous men in higher fields. I would rather haye the glory which rests upon the memory of Dr. Arnold, of Bugby, than the halo which encircles the proudest don of Oxford. It is a great thing to be a real thinker. It is a great thing to have a noble character. But it is a greater thing to plant your thoughts in intellects where they will grow, and to put your principles which have made character, into hearts where they will be cherished. In tbis thought the teachers of all grades can rest content. And Mother Yale, as she calls the roll of her sons who are worthy of her love, will not omit a single one however humble, if only he has done what he could. —3 THE NATION'S CENTENNIAL-1876 ♦ Mr. Prefndent and Fellouo Citizens : This day is sacred to i>atriotism. It is a day rich in precious memories. The all-controlling feel- ing of every American heart at this hour ought to be profound gratitude to Almighty God for his care over us as a nation ; for in the history of no people, save the Hebrews, has His guiding hand been more apparent than in the course of history from the discovery of America down to this centennial anni- versary of our national independence. When more than eighteen hundred years ago Paul stood on Mars Hill, surrounded by almost innumerable evidences of universal idolatry, and si>oke to the Athenians of that living and true Ood, who made the world and all things therein, he taught them this great reli- gious and political truth: that ^^for all nations of men on the face of the earth, God hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation." The discovery and colonization of our country and its subsequent political history, all bear testimony to the truth of this declaration of the in- spired apostle. The discovery of America was apparently an ac- cident. It was really the fulfillment of God's design in his own appointed time. From the discovery of America to the planting of the first permanent col- ♦Delivercd in Danbary, Connecticut, July 4th, 1876. 26 THE NATION'S CENTENNIAL— 1876 ony on the continent was nearly three-quarters of a century. In 1564 a colony was established at Port Boyal by French Huguenots. Spain claimed the country in which they were settled, and Spanish hatred of the French was intensified by religious bigotry. That was not the age of toleration. To- day, beneath the protecting flag of our country, my Catholic neighbor and myself dwell together in peace, exchanging kindly offices of neighborly good will, not seeking points of difference, but glad to find occasion for sympathy and agreement. But then the knife and the fagot were the arguments by which orthodoxy either in church or state punished het- erodoxy. The Huguenot colony was obliterated in a deluge of blood and out of its ruins rose Spanish St. Augustine, forty years before any other town was permanently founded on the continent. It was more than a century from the discovery of the country before an English colony was sus- cessfuUy planted. Gilbert and Raleigh had tried and failed. The sovereigns of England would do nothing. Private enterprise was inadequate. As I do not doubt that Almighty wisdom designedly kept this continent concealed for so many centuries, so I do not doubt that the same wisdom ordained the delay in colonizing our shores after they were dis- covered. To human vision it appears as if a settle- ment at any earlier day would have changed entirely and fatally the character and destiny of our coun- try. Who can doubt that the same Providence which turned CJolumbus, by a flight of birds, from the shores of the continent to the islands of the West Indies, and thus gave to Spain only the dominion of those islands, reserving the continent for England, ap- THE NATION^S CENTENNIAL— 1876 27 pointed also the time when the colonization of onr country should successfully begin. The continent was not discoyered until the Old World had emerged from the ignorance of the Dark Ages and' had fought its way back to the civilization and learning of the brightest periods of the past. It was discovered just as those silent influences were beginning to op- erate in the heart of Europe, by which the religious and intellectual character and opinions of the world were destined to be revolutionized. While the sages of Greece and Borne, Socrates and Plato and Aris- totle, Cicero and Seneca, and the Divine Author of our religion and his apostles were once more speak- ing to the world, the printing press had come to carry their words to all the earth. It was a fit time for the new world to be opened, upon which this flood of learning, human and divine, should be poured. But if the settlement of our country had at once begun, whether through the agency of Spain, or Por- tugal, or France, or England, the foundations of no such grand republic as that which now covers this continent could have been laid. For in no one of these countries were liberty and law, education and toleration, so understood and cherished as they must be by the people who should successfully found the great republic which to-day protects the humblest and the highest alike, whether foreign bom or na- tive, and secures to all its citizens absolute equality before the law, and imlimited freedom of conscience and opinion. And so England, not knowing what she did, waited. Five sovereigns of the Tudor dy- nasty, from Henry VII to the great Elizabeth, one after another, passed away. England had become in the highest sense one of the great powers of the world. 28 THE NATION'S CENTENNIAL— 1876 Her commerce, her industry, her literature had re- ceived an almost divine inspiration. Spencer and Hooker and Bacon and Shakespeare had written. And then, in the reign of James I, while the religious and intellectual influence of the Elizabethan Era were still giving to England a glory which no lapse of time has been able to diminish, our first colony was planted at Jamestown, just before the birth of Milton. America is the child of England, bom in the hour of England's highest historical and literary fame. At her birth, men had already learned the val- ue of liberty and were ready to fight and to die for it. Already that bloody contest was preparing in England in which Charles I lost his head and the race of Stuarts the crown. It is the one character- istic common to all the settlers of our country that they placed the highest value upon human rights, upon religious and political liberty. Had they come at any time before the Elizabethan Era, they could not have brought with them these grand ideas to which we are indebted to-day for the possession of a country which, with all its faults, is the glory of the world. Yet in the first government established in Vir- ginia there was not a single element of popular lib- erty. The political power was in the hands of the king and council. Religion was established by law. Indifference to it was punished by stripes; infidelity, by death. It was twelve years before Virginians enjoyed the rights of Englishmen. Then a General Assembly was constituted. It met on the 30th day of July, 1619, and was the first elective body ever assembled on this continent. The system of repre- THE NATION'S CENTENNIAL— 1876 29 sentation was thus established and thereafter true I>rinciples of goyernment prevailed in Virginia. But now, only one year after Virginia had thus secured for herself a freedom more complete than had yet been attained in England, she suddenly be- comes the home of the worst species of bondage and receives into her bosom an institution destined to be the cause of ^^all our woe." In August a Dutch man-of-war landed twenty negroes and they were sold as slaves. The greatest evil and the greatest good have alike but small beginnings. Three months later the Mayflower, bearing one hundred two Pil- grims, came in sight of the shores of Massachusetts. Is there a €h>d in history? Has the Mayflower any mission to fulfill in relation to that Dutch slave ship? Has that solemn compact of government signed in the cabin of the Mayflower, and which Bancroft pronounces "the birth of constitutional liberty," any influence to exert upon the political future of our country with reference to slavery? Have "that dem- ocratic liberty and independent Christian worship" which "at once existed in America as the Pilgrims landed" any connection with the future national sentiment respecting slavery? I see in the coming years the chains carried from Virginia to Texas, new links constantly forged and new victims manacled, till at last they are numbered by millions. But I see the institutions and principles of the Pilgrims tak- ing possession of New England, of the great Middle States, of the mighty Northwest, on to the shores of the Paciflc ; carried everywhere by the sturdy set- tlers who fell the forests and plant civilization ; pro- claimed and advocated from ten thousand pulpits not of their faith only but of every Christian faith. 30 THE NATION'S CENTENNIAL— 1876 As I watch these two forces moving along resist- lessly in parallel lines across the continent, I see that one of these is the agent in Gk>d's hands for the destruction of the other. And when the irrepress- ible conflict shall come, as come it will, as come it must, in that supreme moment of mortal agony when a great nation shall plunge into a sea of blood for its own purification from a great crime, may Qod be with the brave defenders of liberty and union ! What has given these men of Plymouth their in- fluence? Not the greatness of their colony, for it never became great. It was their possession of a grand idea and their fidelity to it. This idea was not created by them. "For the spirit of Puritanism," as the historian Palfrey remarks, ^^was no creation of the sixteenth century. It is as old as the truth and manliness of England." Nor does he in this assert anything surprising. History is not a record of the accidental workings of blind causes. Revo- lutions are never unaccountable. The great men, who, in the various centuries, have been the leaders of thought, who have lifted the {people up to their platform, and pwept them onward to action and to victory, have not been the creations of the hour. The learning, the experience, and the thought of pre- vious ages have contributed to make them. Luther was not the creation of the sixteenth century. Forces long working culminated in power in his day, and, if he had never livedo there would have come an- other Luther to break the silence which to so many thousands had become unendurable. Lincoln was not the creation of the nineteenth century. His Proc- lamation of Emancipation, by which the shackles were struck from the limbs of four millions of slaves, THE NATION'S CENTENNIAL— 1876 31 was the Toice of American hamanity which had been gathering volume for two centuries ; and at last amid the horrors of civil war and the impending min of the noble structure of constitutional freedom erected by our fathers, sounded forth to the world and to the ages the sublime fiat of universal emancipation. 80 with the men of New England. They were the exponents of an idea older than themselves. It was this, a living principle of individual faith and action, which soon transformed New England, bleak and dreary as she appeared to the Pilgrims on that memorable December morning, and made the wil- derness blossom as the rose. It was this which felled the forests, created villages,, established churches, erected school-houses, and organized the whole sys- tem of Anglo-Saxon indejiendent local self-govern- ment, with its executive and legislature, its churches and church-meeting, its ecclesiastical societies and society-meetings, its towns and town-meetings, its schools and school-meetings. No matter what a man's interests were, it put into his own hands the man- agement of those interests and infused into him a spirit of self-reliance and all-conquering activity. Do you wonder now that, although only 21,000 Eng- lishmen found a home in New England in the first period. of immigration, yet in less than ten years, before this immigration had ceased, six republics had sprung up in New England and the foundations of the seventh were laid. Admire the wisdom and ability with which the governments of these little republics were administered. Where can you find truer statesmanship than that of the older Winthrop, justly entitled to be called the father of New Eng- land, or that of the younger Winthrop, to whom Con- 32 THE NATION'S CENTENNIAI^-1876 necticut owes an especial debt of gratitude? From the first the people proved their capacity for self- government Connecticut, for example, for twenty years had no charter; yet its government, devised by the colonists themselves, was essentially the same as that under which we live to-day, thus demonstrat- ing that the men who can govern themselves as in- dividuals are the best fitted to govern themselves in the state. During the century and a quarter between the founding of Virginia and that of Georgia, the young- est of the thirteen colonies, there was very little con- cert of action among the colonies. The only excep- tion was the "League of the United Colonies of New England." But even this was most carefully guarded, each colony being sensitively jealous of its own rights, and fearful of any control on the part of another. What hope then could there be of union in any emergency, among the rest? Indeed, to a careless observer, the union of our forefathers in the Revolution, the fidelity with which Virginia and South Carolina stood bv Massachusetts and Connec- ticut must appear most wonderful. The colonies? were homogeneous in hardly any respect. They had not less than three different forms of government. Government itself is an educator, and such diversity could not be without effect. What should induce the Cavalier and Churchman of Virginia to join hands^ vntli the Roundhead and Puritan of New England? What bond could unite both of these with the Cath- olic of Maryland, the Quaker of Pennsylvania, the- Baptist of Rhode Island, and the promiscuous ele- ments of the other colonies, in a contest against England, the common parent of them all? THE NATION'S CENTENNIAL— 1876 3a I answer: In all the colonies the direct agents of colonization were the common people, the bone and sinew of a country, the class that has always been most tenacious of liberty. In all the coloniea the political institutions were, with trifling excep- tions, formed at the earliest possible moment upon a common model. Representative government at last prevailed every^'here; in some colonies without dif- ficulty, in others after a struggle. The rights of representation, once secured, could never again be surrendered by a people who knew the value of lib- erty. Had the bond of union among the Americans been anything weaker than a common love for a sacred right, British bayonets would have destroyed it. But before ideas, bayonets are powerless. And so when the hour of the American Revolution had come, as our great historian has said, ^^The people of the continent with irresistible energy obeyed one general impulse, as the earth in spring listens to the command of nature, and, without the api)earance of effort, bursts forth to life in perfect harmony. The change which divine wisdom ordained and whiclx no human force or policy could hold back, proceed- ed as uniformly and majestically as the laws of be- ing, and was as certain as the decree of eternity.'* In the clash of two opposing wills, the American demanding liberty, the Briton denying it, was struck out the spark which kindled a continent into the flames of revolution. The obstinacy of English shop- keepers and of both Houses of Parliament, and es- pecially of the king, had been effectual in produc- ing union among the colonies. A Continental C!on- gress, as the ezi>onent of the united voice of the col- onies, met in 1774; all opposition to armed resist-^ 34 THE NATION'S CENTENNIAL— 1876 ance of England ceased in 1775 with the news of Lexington and Bnnker Hill, just as in 1861, the voice of compromise between freedom and slavery was silenced forever by the guns of Fort Sumter; and in 1776 the whole country was ready for inde- pendence. Congress did not lead. It simply obeyed the voice of the people. Virginia first proclaimed her desire for independence. (Connecticut, Delaware, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, and New Jersey fol- lowed. General Washington freely expressed his opinion that nothing but independence could save us. On the 7th of June, 1776, Richard Henry Lee, of Virginia, ofiPered a resolution in (Congress, "that these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent states." The proi>osition was seconded by John Adams, of Massachusetts. The resolution was debated all day, the 8th of June; it again came up on the 10th, and was then postponed for three weeks. On the 1st of July, the proposition for independence was again brought up. The mover, Richard Henry Lee, was not present. John Adams opened the debate, and the discussion lasted through the day. On the 2d of July the resolution for in- dependence was adopted. Two days later, on the 4th of July, 1776, (Congress adapted the famous "Dec- laration of Independence," containing their reasons for separating from the mother country and the prin- ciples by which in future they were to be guided. ^^The bill of rights which it promulgates is of rights that are older than human institutions, and spring from the eternal justice that is anterior to the state." It is one hundred years to-day since that noble Dec- laration was adopted. For a century it has been the inspiration of the American patriot and a light to THE NATION'S CBNTENNIAI^-1876 35 the world. Its glory is not dimmed. The fame of the men who adopted it has grown brighter year by year. The republic which they founded still liyeSy faithful to the principles of that Declaration, and vastly augmented in territory, wealth, and pow- er. One hundred years! They are more than all to the individual. How little they are to a great nation. They carry generation after generation of men to their graves. But man lives and the nation lives in him and for him. To it the century is but the first few months of infancy, the bare beginning of life and growth. Let "Fancy fold her wings." She can not {mint the greatness of the mature re- public that is to be. I have thus spoken of the forces which created in this western wilderness thirteen independent and liberty-loving republics. I come now to speak of the force which bound these republics together as one nation, e plurihus unum, and of the results of our political system and civilization as they appear at the close of the first century of our national life. The American school-boy is familiar with the history of onr struggle for independence. In those years the tide of war swept over every state and desolated or alarmed almost every neighborhood. Connecticut bore more than her full share of suffer- ing. New London, New Haven, Fairfield, Norwalk, Danbury, all were visited and more or less ravaged. The story of Tryon^s expedition to Danbury, and the desolation he wrought in this county — ^a story most eloquently told here twenty-two years ago by one of Ck>nnecticut's most brilliant orators, when you honored yourselves by raising a monument to the brave General Wooster, I need not now repeat. Great 36 THE NATION'S CENTENNIAI^-1876 as was the misery occasioned by the rarages of the merciless Tory, the spirit of 76 was proof against both the sword and the torch ; and here in Danbury, the imtrioty amid the ashes of his home, renewed his oath of fidelity to liberty. Bo long as the war lasted a common peril tended to bind the colonies together. All felt the need of nnion against a common foe, and very soon the ne- cessity of some agreement between the colonies by which the powers of Congress as the representative of their united sovereignty should be more clearly defined. In November, 1777, "the Articles of Con- federation and Perpetual Union" were adopted, and the "United States of America" came into existence, at least the embryo of a nation. This confederation, the best system of union that could then be extorted from the disturbing jealousy of the colonies, lasted for more than ten years. Its chief defect was its weakness. Congress had large rights but little pow- er. It could declare war, but could not raise men or money to carry it on. It could contract debts, but had no means of paying them. It could not lay taxes nor collect revenue. That power was reserved to the states. Such a mere shadow of a national government could not long meet the wants of an enterprising and commercial people. The necessity for a more i^erfect union at last became so evident that a convention was called in 1787 to revise the Articles of Confederation. This convention ultimate- ly adopted a Constitution, which, having been rati- fied by the states, went into operation in the begin- ning of 1789, and the United States became in fact as in name, one nation. The adoption of the Con- stitution was most earnestly opposed by a large THE NATION'S CENTENNIAL— 1876 37 class very zealous for liberty and dreading any en- croachment on the rights of the people. It was as earnestly supported by others no less true to lib- erty and popular rights, but wise enough to see that to a great country like ours a pure democracy and a pure monarchy were alike unsuited; and that a constitutional republic was the only form of gov- ernment which could insure to the citi:^n at once the freedom of a democracy and the security and strength of a vigorous administration. The modern reader of those matchless papers that make up the Federalist, the production of Hamilton, Jay, and Madison, will get a clear idea of the strength of argument and of the political shrewdness required to induce the states to adopt the Ck>nstitution. And yet so admirable were the workings of this Consti- tution that in a very short time after it went into operation no one was willing to be known as its opponent. For the first twelve years of our life un- der the Constitution the party that favored it held I)ower, and the young nation had that time in which to give its new system a fair trial. It is a matter for congratulation that it was so. The administra- tions of George Washington and John Adams gave the young nation a grand start in the right direc- tion, guided as they were by a wise conservatism as far removed from any attachment for the monar- chical systems of Europe on the one hand as for the unbridled ferocity and license of French republican- ism on the other. Then the power passed to the op- position party, and the name Federalist, by reason of subsequent events, gradually became odious. The new party, called Republicans by themselves and stigmatized as Democrats by their opponents, a name 38 THE NATION'S CENTENNIAL— 1876 which, like many another term of reproach, was ul- timately adopted and cherished as a term of honor^ came into power with Thomas Jefferson as president. In theory it was opposed to a strong^ national gov- ernment, and was favorable to the largest rights of the people and of the states. Its practice, however, when in power, was more conservative than its the- ories before power was gained. It encountered in its career a great variety of enemies organized under numerous party names, from the remnant of the old Federalists in 1800 to the very respectable but un- fortunate Whigs whose banner went down in the dust in hopeless defeat in 1852. For sixty years, with just enough of interruption to prevent its feel- ing wholly irresponsible, it held control of the coun- try. During most of that time its policy was bold and aggressive, commanding the confidence of a ma- jority of the people by the courage with which it ad- liered to its convictions. For the country's good it stretched the Constitution and bought the great Louisiana Territory. It sympathized with France and detested England. It carried us through a war with England in the name of "Free Trade and Sail- or's Bights." It held almost undisputed possession of the country under Monroe. It rose to a new vigor of party-life and to a courage bordering on rashness under Andrew Jackson. With him it met and crushed South Carolina Nullification in '82. With him it crushed the United States Bank by removing the deposits, and it encountered as a sequence the terrible financial crisis of 1837. It met a terrible defeat under Van Buren in 1840, but almost imme- diately recovered its strength, appropriated to itself President Tyler, the successor of Harrison, and in THE NATION'S CENTENNIAL— 1876 39 '44 under Polk defeated the Whigs under gallant Hen- ry Clay. It annexed Texas, carried the country through the Mexican war, added an immense area of territory to our country, a territory demonstrated by Whig statesmen at the time to be worthless, but which has proved to be immensely rich in mineral wealth, not ill-adapted to agriculture, and of such value in all respects that without it the glory of our country to-day would be much less than it is. The party suffered defeat in 1848, but rallied with all its old vigor and won two successive victories in '52 and '56, obliterating the Whig party and meet- ing in the last contest only foes divided and hopeless. And now a question rose into prominence before w^hich all other political questions paled into insig- nificance. The question of slavery, the germs of which were in the CJonstitution itself, although the framers of that instrument little suspected the trou- ble it would cause — ^a question which from time to time, in one form or another, had agitated our coun- try through the whole period of our national life — a question the more dangerous because, unlike other questions, Instead of dividing the people, it divided sections of country — ^a question which once at least had been prevented from destroying the Union only by the skillfully devised Missouri Ck)mpromise of Henry Clay, this same question, which had waited ninety years for settlement and could never be set- tled until it was settled right, was, by the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, brought before the Ameri- can people as the one question of political discussion. A new party called Republican was organized in 1856 on the platform of freedom in the territories. The countrv was agitated as never before. Forces 40 THE NATION'S CENTENNIAI^-1876 before unheard of entered into the political contest. The Republicans won their first great victory in 1860 under Lincoln. The election was followed by the rap- id secession of Southern states, by the mustering of troops, by the gathering of armies, by the clash of arms and the roar of cannon, by bloodshed and sor- row and tears, by all the horrors of a great and pro- longed civil war, Unionists and Rebels alike fight- ing with a valor worthy of the American name. But when the smoke of battle cleared away it was the American flag which was seen to be still waving, it was the Union which still lived, it was secession and slavery that were dead. The ignominious curse of human bondage was obliterated from one end of the land to the other. Since then the nation has been endeavoring to repair the ravages of the war. The Republicans have maintained their control of the Government. Whether they shall continue to do so, or the party that so long held power prior to 1860 shall again be trusted with the control, the contest this fall vnll determine. And now looking back, how plainly appears the wisdom of the fathers in the system of government which they devised. Our institutions have shown themselves equal to every emergency, and able to bear any strain that has been brought upon them. They are seen to be as well fitted for a country broad as the continent as they were for the thirteen original colonies on the Atlantic coast; not only meeting the wants of the descendants of those who framed these institutions, but assimilating in a wonderful man- ner the millions of people who from all parts of the earth have found a home upon our shores. Party spirit has been strong and active with us from the THE NATION'S CENTENNIAL— 1876 41 first. The evila which we experience seem worse than those of which we read, and so the young American may suppose that party bitterness is worse to-day than ever before. But this is not so. No president has ever been more bitterly denounced than was Wash- ington. "The Father of his Country," whose name is sacred to-day in the memory of every citizen of the republic, on the day when he voluntarily retired from the office of president, was assailed in the pub- lic press with language like this : — "The man who is the source of all the misfortunes of our country is this day reduced to a level with his fellow citizens, and is no longer possessed of power to multiply evils upon the United States. Every heart in unison with the freedom and happiness of the i^eople, ought to beat high with exultation that the name of Wash- ington from this day ceases to give a currency to political iniquity and legalize corruption. It is a subject of the greatest astonishment that a single individual should have carried his designs against the public liberty so far as to have put in jeopardy Its very existence. This day (of Washington's re- tirement from office) ought to be a jubilee in the United States." I am certain that there is no such bitterness of party spirit to-day as there has been in the past, and that we are separated by it one from another in our social life, far less than ever before. Our presidents have not generally been the ablest men of the country. The true and fearless states- man inevitably makes enemies. He never experi- ences the woe pronounced ujwn those of whom all men speak well. But all parties have sought in their candidates popularity rather than ability; and few of our presidents in the last fifty years have been 42 THE NATION'S CENTENNIAI^-1876 distingiiiBhed as statesmen. Jackson^ although he proved to be more of a man than even his supporters suspected^ was selected by the Democrats because he was available. 80 was Harrison by the Whigs in -49; Polk by the Democrats in ^44; Taylor by the Whigs in '48; Pierce by the Democrats in '52; Lin- coln in '60 and Grant in '68 by the Republicans. In fact since 1824 the only persons who have become president as the reward of services in the ordinary field of politics and statesmanship are Martin Van Buren in '36, James Buchanan in '56, and Abraham Lincoln in '60. Yet so carefully has the executive power been guarded and so wisely have the diflferent branches of the government been balanced, that very little, if any, positive evil has resulted from this fact. If we have had but little display of originality in our presidents, it is quite possible we may have found our compensation in increased safety. Two questions as old as the Constitution are still live questions in American politics — ^paper mon- ey and the tarifiP. The latter has been treated rather as a matter of expediency and experiment than of fixed principle. The former, in some way the cause of our present business embarrassments, is theoret- ically comprehended by every politician and business man, but practically seems to have exhausted the re- sources of our statesmanship. It is not, at all events, a question to be discussed here and now. We can not boast in this centennial year of any marvelous purity in our politics. The increased use of money in elections, the prevalence of corrupt rings in cities, the monstrous anomaly of a boss in local politics, the participation of congressmen in legis- lation affecting their own pecuniary interests, the THE NATION'S CENTENNIAL— 1876 43 schemes to defraud the goyeniment to which the pub- lic officials lend a helping hand, and worst of all the shame of a cabinet officer, are all occasions for the deepest regret. But amid all these evils, the direct or indirect legacy of the war, there is at least one sign full of hope. It is that the public conscience is not dead, that the people's sense of right is not dulled, that no statesman in power can find so direct and cer- tain a path to the hearts of the people as by the un- flinching and persistent prosecution and punishment of offenders against honesty and law. The voice of the great American people, in whose hands, after all, are the destinies of the republic, is to-day, ^^Let no guil<7 man escape.'' Our religious progress in the last hundred years has sympathized closely with our political. In every colony in the country before the Revolution there was more or less connection between church and state. The adoption of the Constitution put an end to this in great measure, and the drift of public opinion from that time to the present, has been resistlessly in one direction. To-day religion as a faith, and the church as an organism, are matters of individual con- science, and the secular theory of government is al- most universally accepted. Creeds, too, or formulated religion, have lost much of their hold upon the popu- lar mind. Religion is felt to be far more a life than a belief, not, indeed, a life without belief, but as- suredly not a belief without the life. The independ- ence generated by our political system has borne fruits in the realm of religion as seen in the multi- plication of sects, in the advanced thinking manifest- ing itself in denominations most carefully guarded by creeds, in the readiness with which the people pass 44 THE NATION'S CENTENNIAI^-1876 from one denomination to another; while the gen- erally conservative character of religious thought in the country is revealed by the vast proportions of the leading denominations which hold fast to the old- time beliefs, and the comparative lack of growth of those denominations which have abandoned the faith of the fathers. Throughout the past hundred years there have been many alterations of intellectual and emotional religion ; and it can not be doubted that so long as man shall possess both mind and heart, the great facts of the spiritual world toward which we are all moving, will continue to affect him in dif- ferent ways at different times, now calling for the calm, intellectual survey of truth, and now exciting those powerful emotions which the word of God in its relation to human sin and salvation has so often aroused. But even in this respect our progress has been steadily away from fanaticism, superstition, and bigotry, and towards that intelligent faith, which, while looking at the things which are unseen and eternal, does not ignore the lessons taught by things which are seen and temporal. Nor has the general interest of the people in religion diminished, if we may judge from their zeal in erecting houses of wor- ship. In the days of the Revolution there was one cliurch for every seventeen hundred persons; now there is a church for every five hundred and twenty- nine. If the truly religious soul finds more comfort in studying the facts of the census report than the manifestations of religious life about him, let him not by any means be discouraged. We have made progress. Neither in public nor private life to-day have we any sentiment so bad as the blatant infi- delity and flippant unbelief of the Revolutionary THE NATION'S CENTENNIAL— 1876 45 days. If the church is continually disgraced by the fall of unworthy members, it is no new thing. There was a Judas in the time of Christ; an Ananias and Sapphira in the time of the great apostolic revival; and simony itself takes its name from a baptized be- liever in the days of Peter and John. We have not many more cases to-day ; while never before has there issued from the church such a pure stream of Chris- tian beneficence as now ; never before have there been sweeter examples of pure and undefiled religion in in- dividual lives. It would be pleasant, if time permitted, to speak of the vast territory now embraced within our coun- try, so much larger than one hundred years ago; of our well-developed manufactures, able now, for the first time, to compete with Europe in her own mar- kets; of our untold wealth of mineral treasures; of general increase of comfort in the means and mode of living ; of the vastly augmented productions of our agriculture, aided by improved implements; of our increased facilities for intercommunication and trade by means of steamboats, canals, and railroads ; of our telegraphs speaking at once to the Pacific, the At; lantic, the Gulf, and whispering beneath the ocean to the nations on the other sida In the great Ex- hibition at Philadelphia, in the American depart- ment are evidences that the past century, this nation has neither been idle nor foolishly employed; but that in the development of its material resources it has shown a skill of which any nation on earth might be proud. And yet the real glory of man, which makes him Hhe paragon of animals," is not the wealth which his labor creates, but his intellect. The real glory 46 THE NATION'S CENTENNIAL— 1876 of a nation is the cultivation of the intellectual and moral faculties of its people. No subject cennected with our history presents a brighter view than edu- cation. From the first, the settlers of New England felt the need of education for their children, and were ready to provide for it at any expense of personal comfort to themselves. The system they adopted was their own, the product of their desires and their needs. It secured to their children in the com- mon school a plain but useful education. Not un- mindful of the wants of the church and the profes- sions, they early founded colleges for a higher edu- cation. Time has strengthened and enlarged this sys- tem, only to make it more dear to every American heart. The new states and territories have adopted the New England common school system; so that north and west the humblest child may gain an edu- cation, and in the south, progress of a most grati- fying character is making in the same direction. Out of the common school have grown the graded school and the high school. The range of study has been widened, the methods of teaching have been improved, and the qualifications of teachers have been raised; possibly by our system we have sacrificed something of the old time individual vigor and independence; but if so we must console ourselves with the thought that so long as all are well trained it matters not if they are trained alike. I need not speak of the millions of scholars in our schools, nor of the millions of dollars invested in school property. Every thriv- ing village is an example of the people's generous appreciation of education. It is regarded not as a luxury but as a necessity. The law says not that children may be educated, but that they must be. THE NATION'S CENTENNIAL— 1876 47 In 1776 there were nine collies in the country. To- day there are five hundred. Some of these hardly de- serve the name, but they all serve, at least, to show the popular desire for a higher education. If, notwithstanding our schools and collies, sta- tistics show that our country has still a large amount of illiteracy, it is due to causes outside of our edu- cational system, causes, too, which must operate much less powerfully in the future. Our system may have failed to secure the highest education, but it has made good education possible for all. Much in- deed remains to be done. Growth is the law of life. The wisest students best know how far short of an ideal standard our national education still is; but the fSBt has been so full of progress and the present is so rich in promise, that there is no just cause for any feeling but hope respecting the educational future of our country. And now what of the political future? I have spoken of the hardy settlers by whom our country was colonized, of the heroes by whom our independ- ence was achieved, and of the statesmen by whom our government was established. They are not so far removed from us that the ties of i)ersonal sympathy are entirely sundered. Some of us have heard in our younger years, from the lips of an aged veteran, the story of the struggle for independence; or, in the thrice-told tale received from his fathers, have felt the joys and the sorrows of a half-civilized life in ihe wilderness. But between our early experience and that of our children, there has come a great gulf of blood. The patriotism and heroism of '76, eclipsed and yet glorified by the patriotism and heroism of '61, can never be to the coming generation what 48 THE NATION'S CENTENNIAL— 1876 they were to ug. Prom the records of this later strug- gle our children will draw their inspiration. Talk to them of heroism, of manliness, of self-devotion; they will point you not alone to Bunker Hill and Valley Forge, but to Gettysburg, to Fredericksburg^ to Vicksburg, to Antietam, to Sherman's march, to the battles of the Wilderness, to the long and final strug- gle for Richmond. Talk to them of the patient suf- fering of woman. They will tell you, not of the mothers of the Revolution, but of those mothers in these later times, who in the midst of plenty and a mature civilization, voluntarily sent forth from the luxury and love of home the bravest and the best to die for liberty and law. Talk to them of generals, whose deeds make the pages of our history radiant with glory, and they will sound the praises not alone of Greene and Putnam, or Warren and Schuyler, but of Grant and Sherman, Sheridan and Thomas. Talk to them of Christian statesmen adorning by their lives the country which they governed, and they will speak reverently the names of Washington and his honored associates, while they pronounce with ten- derness and tears the name of the patriot and martyr, Abraham Lincoln. But in our just reverence for the noble living and dead of our own day, in our enthusiasm over the grand achievements of these few years, the salva- tion of the Union and the inauguration of univer- sal liberty, we must not forget the past, we must not ignore the future. We have emerged from a terrible civil war. The passions of the conflict are some- what allayed. It may be harder for the South, con- quered, wounded, bloody, its favorite institution prostrated forever, its slaves freemen, to lay aside THE NATION'S CENTENNIAL— 1876 49^ its resentments than for the victorious North. But as we remember the fidelity and patriotism of South- ern statesmen in the olden time, let us say to our Southern brethren: Meet us to-day; on this cen- tennial anniversary of our common independence meet us, as your fathers met ours on the Fourth of July, 1776, in the interest of liberty and union. Meet us on the platform then and there framed by your own great statesman — the platform of ^'liberty and Equal Rights." Jjet the differences of the past be forgotten in a common zeal for the highest interests of our common country. Let the courage so heroically ex- hibited on many a battlefield, when we were fight- ing each other, henceforth be reserved only for con- tests with the foes of our common country. We are brethren. Let there be peace and love between us. Jjet this day, with its memories sacred to you and ta us alike, be the hour of complete and eternal recon- ciliation. Then, indeed, shall this centennial year witness, not the birth of a new nation, but a nation born again, bom into a higher and nobler life; in which honor shall govern in politics as well as in business; in which patriotism shall be kindled into a new fervor? in which the manliness, the courage, and the piety of the fathers shall find a new expression in the sons ; in which the permanence of our republic shall be as- sured, by the higher tone of public and private mor- als, and the universal adoption of that grand old sentiment, "Liberty and union, now and forever, one and inseparable.*' ELOQUENCE AND THE LAW * I am to address to-night, as I suppose, an audience composed largely of young men who are engaged in studying law and of others, ladies and gentlemen, who individually or collectively feel a deep interest in these law students. The young men are fitting themselves not merely for a place in the profession, but, as I trust, for a place in the front ranks of the profession, where, as you have often been told, there is more room than anywhere else. They can suc- ceed in their purpose only by becoming both a law- yer and an orator. Good sense and a knowledge of law will carry them safely through a multitude of cases — if they are so fortunate as to have a multi- tude— but th^re will surely come some occasions when facts and law will need to be transfigured as they can be only by the soul of the orator. Yet many lawyers who are faithful and successful stu- dents, never attain to real freedom in the practice of the highest part of their profession, because they are restrained by native timidity and distrust, which they might overcome but do not. Where is the man worth listening to who does not always feel more or less of this same timidity and distrust? Of course the man who has no sensibilities feels no reluctance ^Delivered before a society of law students and their guests at the Yale Law School, February, 1881. 52 ELOQUENCE AND THE LAW to appear before an audience as a speaker. He does not siiflfer but his audience does. Men who have sen- sibilitie43y no matter how many times they may have faced the public, involuntarily shrink from appear- ing before an assembly for the purpose of address- ing it. In proof of this examples might be given almost without number. It is not because speakers have any coward blood in their veins and are afraid of their hearers ; for the true orator is always coura- geous. It is rather the result of the very conditions which are necessary to success. Cicero was unquestionably second only to De- mosthenes among the orators of antiquity, and he certainly entertained no poor opinion of his own mer- its; yet he declared that when he thought of the mo- ment when he must rise and speak in defence of a client, not only was he disturbed in mind, but he trem- bled in every limb of his body. The late Earl of Derby was a very fearless speak- er, his manner as far as possible removed from every appearance of embarrassment. Yet he said to Ma- caulay: "My throat and lips when I am going to speak are as dry as those of a man who is going to be hanged." The gifted author of Endymion, Disraeli, evident- ly had not forgotten his own early experience, when he wrote the description of his hero's first attempt at speaking in the House of Commons. "When he got on his legs his head swam, his heart beat so violently that it was like a convulsion preceding death ; and though he was on his legs for only a few seconds, all the sorrows of his life seemed to pass before him." It cost Canning a desperate struggle to attain ELOQUENCE AND THE LAW 53 success in oratory, and lie never freed himself from a certain tremulous excitement before speaking. A friend^ shaking hands with him one day just before Canning was to speak, exclaimed, "Why, Mr. Can- ning, how your hand trembles!" "Does it," said Canning. "Then I shall make a good speech." This does not mean that everybody who trembles in an- ticipation of making a speech, will make a good speech. The trembling may result from fear. It does mean that an impalpable something, which was not fear, but which in anticipation of the coming con- test, made the speaker's hand tremble, communicat- ing itself to the thought when the contest came, would make the hearts of the hearers vibrate like Canning's hand. John B. Gough, who certainly after he got fairly started made the most fearful experiments in ora- tory with the most serene confidence, told us in substance that, although he had addressed thousands upon thousands of audiences in England and Ameri- ca, he could not, to the last, think of facing an audience without that throbbing of the heart which young speakers know so well, and which old speakers seldom lose till their power as orators is ended. I have always admired Wendell Phillips as the prince of American orators. He attained the re- sults of eloquence at less expense of lungs and vital force than any other public speaker whom I have ever heard. His appearance on the platform was marked by an absolute composure which indicated complete self-possession. Yet, when in conversation with him I asked him if he ever felt reluctant to appear before an audience, his reply was : "Always. It is not so much the fear of failure as the thought, 54 ELOQUENCE AND THE LAW what can I possibly say that will pay all these peo- ple for coming together." The feeling is that what a speaker says to two thousand people ought to be two thousand times as good as what he says to a single person. And yet the speaker knows that practically he is addressing but a single person; for what he says, if it satisfy the taste and the judg- ment of one hearer, can just as well perform the same office for every hearer with no diminution of power. For the speaker is not in reality isolated and the audience as a solid body arrayed against him. He is in communication with each person in the audience and each person in communication with him. Thus every individual in the audience is iso- lated from all the rest, and the speaker is the only one who is not isolated. Mr. Gough said that at the beginning of an address he involuntarily selected in- dividuals in the audience to talk to; and if he suct ceeded in interesting and pleasing them, he felt cer- tain of the rest of his hearers. This is a practice by no means confined to Mr. Gough, but it is one which I have never adopted. Experience is a hard school, but I early learned in it that all is not gold that glitters. In one of the first public speeches that I ever delivered — ^it was when I was a senior in college — I was cheered and delighted by a face in the audience beaming with a smiling radiance, as if a stream of unceasing delight were flowing through the heart at everything I said. Naturally pleased at such a tribute to my eloquence, I, at the close of the meeting, inquired of one of the prominent gentlemen present, who my admirer was. "O," said he, "he's a poor foolish fellow. He doesn't know anything." I did not explain why I made the inquiry. ELOQUENCE AND THE LAW 55 But that long-continued tribute to my eloquence had lost its value, and I retired from the scene a sadder and a wiser man. So great an orator as Charles James Fox once said when told that a certain speech read well, ^^Then it must have been a bad speech." The remark was a just one. But if the converse of that were true, and every speech which does not read well were a good speech, how happy very many speakers would be, and especially those who find not their speech but some scattered fragments of their speech the next day reported in the daily i>aper8. A speech is made under one set of conditions, and is addressed to an audience in a certain mental and emotional state. It meets the requirements of the case and is a suc- cess. It is printed the next day in the daily paper as the reporter sees fit to have it printed. He can print it somewhat in the shape in which it was de- livered, or, with no special genius' for murder, he can murder it. It is then read the next morning in cold blood and is pronounced lacking in connection of thought, or- in strength of argument, or in what under the circumstances is certainly natural, in life. And so it is. But from what is thus read and con- demned, you. get no more just idea of the speech which was delivered, as it was delivered, than you would get of the genius of Shakespere from reading Clark's Concordance ; or of Daniel Webster's speeches from reading Noah Webster's Dictionary. Doubt- less Daniel's thoughts are all in Noah's Dictionary; but the arrangement is different. There have been many men eminent both as law- yers and as orators. A legal mind and eloquence therefore are not incompatible. On the other hand 56 ELOQUENCE AND THE LAW there have been examples without number of men who possessed a legal mind and great knowledge of the law, who were able to instruct the court and the jury by the thoroughness of their investigations and the soundness of their logic, nay, who by the sheer force of their facts skillfully arranged, were able to interest and convince the jury, who yet never attained to real eloquence even in the court room, and were still less effective speakers outside of the court room. And there have been examples, less nu- merous indeed, because eloquence is a rare gift, of men who were eloquent in the popular assembly, on the platform, or in the deliberative body, who were not famous as lawyers, and in all probability never would have been, had they devoted themselves faith- fully and exclusively to the work of that profession. A legal mind is the gift of God; and eloquence is the gift of God. Sometimes a lawyer has both gifts, and sometimes only one. They who have neither are lawyers only by courtesy. I have a higher respect for the thoroughly equipped and accomplished lawyer than for any other class of intellectual men. The law is a noble science; and it may be so practiced as to be as elevating in its influence on the lawyer as its study is on the stu- dent. But there are serious hindrances to this. The habit of appearing for the wrong side and arguing against one's own convictions, always deadening in its effect; the constant view of litigants when they are at their worst ; the necessity of dealing with mat- ters of little interest save to the excited and angered client, with cases in which little more than a busi- ness interest can be felt, and in which eloquence would be absolutely out of place ; and in a majority of ELOQUENCE AND THE LAW 57 instances, with cases in which, abstractly considered, only the head and not the heart of the lawyer must be engaged — ^all these things tend to make a majority of the profession, while they are clear in their percep* tions and logical in. their reasoning, wanting in that higher eloquence which springs from the heartfelt appreciation of great truths contemplated as affect- ing human interests. That they do not always pro- duce this result is greatly to the credit of those who rise superior to these adverse influences. And when a lawyer does rise above these influences, acute, sharp-sighted, discriminating, knowing the law, and knowing men, he will prove himself an orator when- ever the great occasion comes to him in the court room. But if he pass out of the court room into that wider domain which comprehends questions of government and national policy, and human wel- fare, he will bring to the discussion of those questions a better trained mind and a greater capacity for the highest eloquence than the man of any other pro- fession whatever. You can practice law so that it will be no more ennobling than a trade and pass from it to the legislature or to Congress and carry with you no more inspiration than you felt in a Justice's court ; or, you may so practice it that every exi)erience shall result in growth, and all the natural fountains of eloquence in you shall be deepened and sweetened. Then again the lawyer as a public speaker has some manifest advantages over others. Nothing is so discouraging to a clergyman as to prepare a good sermon and then, when he goes to the church to preach it, find that most of the congregation for whom it was prepared have remained at home. Noth- 58 EILOQUENCE AND THE LAW ing of this kind happens to a lawyer. He is always sure of an audience, and of all the audience that has anything to do with his case, or that he need have anything to do with in order to gain his case. The state provides that certain persons shall be there and hear him. They are sworn to hear him. The state pays them for their suflferings. He is the only man who has a people paid to listen to him. They must give him a respectful, if not interested, atten- tion. Outside of this small number of persons who are to decide his case, the attendance of the public, as in other assemblies, will be regulated by the prevalent opinion as to whether the proceedings will be in- teresting or not. A large attendance of persons not directly connected with the case will undoubtedly stimulate the lawyer to a higher exertion. But if he is a true lawyer he will not speak to these spec- tators, but will speak always to court or jury. I have sat in a court room crowded to its utmost capacity, and have listened to the argument of a lawyer whom I knew to be a true man to the bottom of his heart, always strong when he knew he was right and always weak when he knew he was wrong, as every true man is. I have hung upon his lips pleading for the life of his client, till my (sympathy with the prisoner, and my conviction of his innocence and his danger became almost insupportable. Yet the prisoner was no more to me when I entered the court room than any man on the other side of the globe. "All for Hecuba! What's Hecuba to him or he to Hecuba?" But the prisoner was something more to the lawyer who stood between him and death. And so nobly did this lawyer fulfil the solemn trust that none could doubt that the occasion was grand ELOQUENCE AND THE LAW 59 enough to justify the deep emotion of both speaker and hearers. The oratory of the lawyer, then, ought to be in some respects the best possible kind of ora- tory; and it is. He deals with facts and with prin- ciples. Every case is a real case. The material for his argument lies in the facts developed by the testi- mony or in the precedents by which the law has been interpreted. When a clergyman on Monday morning begins to think vaguely about what he shall preach on next, he is like Adam and Eve outside the gates of Paradise — ^^the world is all before him where to choose" ; and he is nearly as wretched as they were. But the lawyer is shut in from the very first to a definite subject and a definite object, the securing of a verdict for his client. He knows that anything less than this is a failure. He is less tempted, therefore, than men in other departments of life, where no verdict is to be immediately rendered, to sacrifice success to the gratification of his vanity, and to say things for momentary applause, that, per- haps, by distracting the hearer*s attention may destroy the effect of what really pertains to the case. His own reputation will be enhanced far more by gaining a verdict through his sound argu- ment than by the highest eloquence that is unsuc- cessful. Of all men, he is most under bonds to self-interest, to think least of himself and most of his cause. As a consequence judicial eloquence by right takes a first place in the domain of oratory. For true oratory is never presented for its own sake, but as a means for attaining an end outside of itself. Ton do not listen to it with idle admiration or with the exquisite delight of a cultivated taste as you look at the production of the Fine Arts. You think, you GO ELOQUENCE AND THE LAW feel, you believe, you act, as you would not, but for this controlling force which has entered into your brain and heart and now compels you to do its bid- ding. No such result as this follows usually or natur- ally from painting or sculpture. As we gasse at them the skill of the artist is a prominent object of thought. "Nature," says Sir Thomas Browne, "is the art of God." Yes, but His is an absolutely creative art, the mighty products of which spread all over the earth in beauty and in glory, or, stretched before us in that most sublime picture which human eye has ever gazed upon, the starry heavens in a clear winter's night, men look upon with admiration or even awe, and, while their very souls are thrilled with the sense of beauty or sublimity, it may be that no thought of the great artist enters their minds. But with human art and human artists this is not so; and that, not be- cause the human artist is supposed or expected to surpass the divine. There is a large field in which art may improve upon nature. The useful arts all do this. But wherever nature and art come into direct competition there can be no question as to which is superior. You can not by any combination of elements produce anything so wholesome for the lungs as the pure air of heaven. You can make no drink that will quench thirst like cold water. No light is so pleasant to the eye as daylight. No i>ainter can make a flower more beautiful than nature has made it. No sculptor can surpass the models which nature has provided. When, therefore, you look at a beautiful painting of a flower your admiration is not mainly for the beauty of the flower — ^you have seen thousands far more beautiful and after a brief inspection have thrown them away. What you ad- ELOQUENCE AND THE LAW 61 mire is the skill of the artist in the reproduction of the loveliness of nature. I know that painting and sculpture do much beside exciting our admiration for the artist's skill. The artist may have had a great and noble thought and, as you follow it, you may forget the artist and even his work. But, neverthe- less, the truth remains that in the contemplation of the fine arts, the artist himself is not improperly a central figure in our thoughts. The same is true to a certain extent of the poet But it is not true of the orator. Only to a very lim- ited extent is true oratory ever designed simply to please. Never is the attention of the hearer direct- ed to the skill of the orator as the leading object of thought. If it ever happens that the net result of an oration, address, sermon, is admiration for the speak- er, the performance must be set down as a failure. It may have accomplished all that its author intend- ed. But if he intended no more than that, you may call him whatever else you please, he certainly does not deserve the name of orator. For an orator is a man with positive beliefs, definite purposes, and settled plans ; and when he speaks it is to win others to his beliefs, purposes, and plans. Failing in this, no matter how much admiration he may excite for his literary skill, he will be the first to feel that his performance was a failure. The true orator, then, does not aim to be brilliant or eloquent. He aims to gain the end for which he speaks. To be applauded as eloquent and yet see his client condemned, to be applauded as eloquent and yet see his cause voted down, to be applauded as eloquent and yet see his people act just as they would have acted if he had never spoken, isnot pleasant to a 62 ELOQUENCE AND THE LAW man who has a soul large enough to si>eak of. When- ever this happens, the eipeaker in some way has made a great mistake. He has failed to fasten the atten- tion of his hearers upon those considerations which make him believe that his client is innocent, or his cause just, or the truth he utters important. Con- sciously or unconsciously he has interposed himself between the truth and the hearers, and has thereby sacrificed the cause, of which he was the unskillful, if not the unworthy, advocate. Now the lawyer knows that though he clothe him- self with eloquence as with a garment, if he fails to gain a verdict for his clients, he fails utterly. And so in a practical way he deals with real cases; and whatever feeling shows itself in his argument, will be that feeling which is the mother of eloquence, bom of the subject itself. Confining his attention to the case, he makes the jury think of it and not of him; and so when they give him a verdict, it is often with- out the slightest suspicion that his skill has helped them to a decision. They may even think little of him as an orator, while by their decision they pay the highest tribute to his powers. Thus, the bank presi- dent who acted as foreman of the jury in a case in which Bufus Choate appeared as counsel, said: ^'Knowing Mr. Choate's skill in making white appear black, and black white, I made up my mind at the outset that he should not fool me. He tried all his arts but it was of no use. I just decided according to the law and the evidence." "Of course you gave your verdict against Mr. Choate's client?" "Why, no. We gave a verdict for his client. But then we couldn't help it. He had the law and the evidence on his side." ELOQUENCE AND THE LAW 63 So the countrymani who had been serying on a jury before which Mr, Scarlett, afterward Lord Abinger, had repeatedly appeared as counsel, being asked what he thought of the leading counsel, re- plied : "Well, that lawyer Brougham be a wonderful man. He can talk, he can. But I don't think now't of lawyer Scarlett." "Indeed? You surprise me. Why, you have been giving him all the verdicts." "O, there's nothing in that," said the juror. "He be so lucky, you see, he be always on the right side." The truth is that Scarlett was such an admirable speaker, adapting his thought and style perfectly to the sim- plicity of the jury, that they never discovered that he was either aiding them or leading them. He made them not only think his thoughts after him but even believe that all the while they were thinking their own thoughts. Yet when Mr. Scarlett went into Par- liament, he failed utterly as did that other great jury lawyer, Erskine. Their eloquence emptied the benches so rapidly that Macaulay calls them "dinner bells." It is not very difficult to tell why they failed. Both felt that they were addressing a different grade of men from the ordinary jury, that they had to deal with men more familiar with the parliamentary arena than themselves and better acquainted with govern- mental questions. Indeed Sheridan said to Erskine : "Erskine, you are afraid of Pitt, and that is the flabby jmrt of your character." I have known many men who were admirable in their management of a case in court, who were insuf- ferably dull in discussing general principles and ques- tions of practical legislation. If a man is to be an effective speaker anywhere, his manhood must come to the front. This manhood 64 ELOQUENCE AND THE LAW is not body, it is not brains, it is not character, it is not courage. It is all of these combined. Why is it that essentially the same thought uttered by one person will produce no e£fect, and uttered by another person will be exceedingly impressive? It is not a mat* ter of elocution merely. It is not merely a difference of style. There is something almost inexplicable about it. But in the last analysis it comes to about this^ that in the one case there is seen to be a man back of the thought and in the other there isn't. In the one case there is a soul making its demands upon your soul ; in the other there is no soul appealing to yours. Real men, true men, learned men, even earnest men^ men so good in every respect that you wonder that they fail as speakers, do fail, and I know of no reason unless it be that through some cowardly self-con- sciousness they hide their real manhood, instead of letting it come to the front at the moment when it is most needed, the moment when they specially de- sire to move men by the combined powers of mind and soul. For them there is never anything but the "small and cold pattering of rain." Never does "the thunder cloud descend upon the Giant Peak." Never does there come the one flash, the one peal echoing through creation like the angry voice of Him whose throne is the heaven and whose footstool is the earth. For these men there is no possibility of elo- quence because there is never any accumulation of feeling and of force. Yet eloquence — ^that characteristic of human speech which not one of you can define and which every one of you has felt and never fails to recog- nize by the electric thrill which passes through you whenever its power is revealed— eloquence has as ELOQUENCE AND THE LAW 65 many formB as the human soul has feelings. Never is it mightiest when it voices the most turbulent and noisy emotions unless these have been aroused by gross injustice, and not always even then. Not in the earthquake, not in the great and strong wind which rent the mountains and brake in pieces the rocks ; not in the fire, did Gk>d reveal himself to his chosen proph- et standing upon the mount, but in the still small' voice. And so in every age, and in every civilized land, the deepest and holiest feelings of man's nature have been stirred by forms of eloquence as unlike the flaming passion of Chatham and Demosthenes, as the still small voice in which God spoke to Elijah was unlike the thunderings and the lightnings, the black- ness and the darkness and the tempest in which he spoke to his people at Mt. Binai. While all eloquence is born of emotion, it is never- theless true that an unemotional man may be an ex- cellent lawyer; from which it follows that an excel- lent lawyer need not be eloquent. I think that, emotion, tenderness of feeling, quickness of sympathy, . are less important as means of success in the law than anywhere else. Indeed I have sometimes ques- tioned whether they are not a positive hindrance, rather than a help to what is usually called success^ at the bar. An accurate knowledge of all the facts- of a case, and of all the law which affects the case, and calm cold logic in applying the law to the facts will win every case that ought to be won, in the- court of last resort, if not in those where less dis- ciplined minds render a verdict. The great want of our modern oratory is compact energy. As Brougham describes it, ^^It seems to be* the principle never to leave anything unsaid that can? CG ELOQUENCE AND THE LAW . be said on any one topic ; to run down every idea that is started ; to let nothing pass ; and leave nothing to the reader, but harass him with anticipating every- thing that could possibly strike his mind/' — in which statement Brougham has unwittingly given an illus- tration of the very fault of which he complains. It is a very grave fault. It tends to reduce all thoughts, all facts, all principles to one dead level, and that a level of mediocrity. If one fact has greater signifi- cance than another, who is to give it its prominence if not the orator? And t)iis question has a greater significance for the lawyer than for any other class of public speakers. There is no more intolerable bore in the universe, I say it in compassion of unnum- bered juries yet to be summoned, and who are at the mercy of the profession, than the lawyer, who with- out discrimination between the important and the unimportant, persists in making the intelligent jury travel over every inch of the great Sahara of evidence instead of taking them to the only three or four de- lightful oases in which alone is there any evidence of life. Said Chief Justice Ellsworth : "Give me three or four important points in a case, and I will throw away all the minor considerations." It is simply a question whether you will make the important things tell, or make nothing tell. It is simply a question whether you shall spend as much time in discoursing on the qualities of the alabaster box of ointment, as you do upon the efficacy of repentance which brought to the woman who was a sinner the forgiveness of the Bedeemer of the world. A speech that is made up of multitude of parts, each of which is elaborated with abundance of epi- thets, becomes intolerable. If, however, the parts are ELOQUENCE AND THE LAW 67 dwelt upon with conciseness, if every fact is laid bare, if the hearer can see that the orator is wasting no words, but is putting his case before him with all the clearness and order which careful study can com- mand, and with as much rapidity as the nature of the case will admit, the orator is then doing the best that in such a case is possible. To dwell upon each part and exhaust its power, leaves nothing to be said effectively when the parts have been combined. You remember the famous scene between Canning and Brougham during the session of the House of Com- mons in 1823. Mr. Canning had a few days before made a speech of a peculiarly stinging character to which Brougham was waiting for an opportunity to reply. The opportunity at length came. "Upon that occasion," says a writer, "the oration of Brougham was disjointed and ragged, and apparently without aim or application. He careered over the whole an- nals of the world, and collected every instance in which genius had prostituted itself at the footstool of power, or principle had been sacrificed for the vanity or the lucre of place ; but still there was no allusion to Canning, and no connection, that ordinary men could discover, with the business before the House. When, however, he had collected every material which suited his puri>ose, when the mass had become big and black, he bound it about and about with the cords of illustra- tion and argument; when its union was secure, he swung it round and round with the strength of a giant and the rapidity of a whirlwind, in order that its im- I)etu8 and effects might be the more tremendous ; and while doing this, he ever and anon glared his eye, and pointed his finger, to make the aim and the direction sure. Canning himself was the first that seemed to «8 ELOQUENCE AND THE LAW be aware where and how terrible was to be the col- lision ; and he kept writhing his body in agony, and rolling his eye in fear as if anxious to find some shel- ter from the impending bolt. The House soon caught the impression, and every man in it was glancing fear- fully, first toward the orator and then toward the Secretary. There was, save the voice of Brougham, which growled in that undertone of muttered thun- der w^hich is so fearfully audible, and of which no ispeaker of the day was fully master but himself, a silence as if the angel of retribution had been flaring in the faces of all parties the scroll of their personal and political sins. The stiffness of Brougham's figure had vanished; his features seemed concentrated al- most to a point ; he glanced toward almost every part of the House in succession ; and sounding the death- knell of the Secretary's forbearance and prudence with both his clinched hands upon the table, he hurled at him an accusation more dreadful in its gall, and more torturing in its effects, than had ever been hurled at mortal man within the same walls. The result was instantaneous, was electric. It was as when the thun- der cloud descends upon the Oiant Peak; one flash, one peal, the sublimity vanished, and all that remained was a small and cold pattering of rain. Canning started to his feet, and was able only to utter the un- guarded words, 'It is false/ to which followed a dull chapter of apologies." You have never witnessed such a performance as this of Brougham's just de- scribed. But do you suppose that speech was con- structed on the easy principles of Southey, saying what you have to say as perspicuously and briefly as possible and without art? Is not the ragged and disjointed gathering of facts purposely ragged and ELOQUENCE AND THE LAW 69 disjointed? Is not the failure to refer each fact, as stated, at once to Canning made purposely? Did he not see clearly what terrible force could be given by combining all these facts and hurling his charge once and for all at his opponent? I trust I shall excite jealousy in no member of the profession when I say that, as a jury lawyer. Lord Erskine has never had a superior. Doubtless he was eloquent, but his eloquence seems to me to have been very much over-rated. At all events he did not owe his success primarily to his eloquence, nor is it this which constitutes the main charm of his addresses to the jury. He was not a profound lawyer, but, like Fox, he had a wonderful capacity for making the most of the labors of other people. He took the decisions which blackletter lawyers searched out for him, and from these he formulated a principle applicable to the case in hand, which principle runs through his whole address like a river through a landscape. To this, every fact and principle are made to contribute. The attention of the jury is directed not to many things, but to one thing. He was thus a constant help to the jury, showing them a clear way out of the complications of the case. We are not surprised, there- fore, that his hearers never yawned or went to sleep under his oratory ; that after the court and jury had listened for days to witnesses and to other barristers, till their endurance was nearly exhausted, he had but to address them for five minutes, when every feeling of weariness would vanish, and they would hang spell-bound upon his words. But to me the greatest charm in the arguments of Erskine is the perfect knowledge of human nature which he displays, and the confidential relations which he always establishes 70 ELOQUENCE AND THE LAW between himself and the jury. He seems to be not an advocate begging something of the jury, but the private counsel of the jury itself, advising them what under the circumstances is the best decision for them to come to. And juries all felt this to be so. It might be said of him, as the Duke of Wellington said of Bir James Scarlett, that when he addressed a jury there were thirteen jurymen. The perfect confidence with which in his perorations he dispenses with any special appeal to the jury, assuming that as a matter of course they will decide as he has shown them to be proper, is as beautiful as it is justifiable by the cir- cumstances of the case. Doubtless ^^he had every personal advantage, an attractive person, a mag- netism of the eye which was almost irresistible, a diction pure, simple, and mellifluous, and action such that it was a common remark of men who observed his motions that they resembled those of a hlood-horse; as light, as limber, as much betokening strength and speed, as free from all gross superfluity or encum- brance.-' All these things were doubtless helps, but they are nothing compared with the strong common sense, the knowledge of human nature, and that per- fect unity of thought which forced every jury he en- countered to put itself under his guidance, and to look at things as he looked at them. I do not under- rate the eloquence of Erskine. But strike out from his arguments in behalf of Lord Gteorge Gordon, Hardy, Stockdale, Frost, or Bingham, every passage which is eloquent, and the great arguments would still remain, to be perused by scholars and lawyers, with ever increasing astonishment and delight. He gained his cases by the charmingly natural, clear, and logical manner in which he presented controlling arguments. e:loquence and the law 71 And here I might speak of Bufoci Choate, certain- ly the most remarkable forensic speaker this country has produced, an orator in many respects superior eyen to Webster, in wit, in learning, in affluence of diction, in gorgeous rhetoric, in the glorious blazonry of imagination, in myriad-mindedness, in capacity to sound the sweetest notes through the whole gamut of oratory. And yet superior to Webster as he con- fessedly was in the Tariety and flexibility of his char- acteristics, I think Choate would have said of Webster what Macbeth said of Banquo : There is none but he Whose being I do fear : and under him My Genius is rebuked, as it is said Mark Antony's was by Caesar's. Were I to attempt a description of the character- istics of this wonderful man, and of the Tarious meth- ods by which he gained his victories at the bar, I should soon be reduced to the despair of the stenog- rapher, who, attempting to report one of Choate's wonderful speeches, at last threw down his pencil, ex- claiming, ^^Who can report chain-lightning." A heavenly body of unusual magnitude and brilliancy he undoubtedly was, but with an orbit so eccentric that its path in the heavens can not be accurately cal- culated from a single appearance. We must see more than one Bufus Choate, before we can explain all the secrets of his success. But the best representative of the lawyer and the orator, whether English or American, is Daniel Web- ster. His pre-eminence in both respects can not be dis- puted. The qualities which made him eminent as an advocate are the same qualities which made him emi- 72 ELOQUENCE AND THE LAW nent as an orator in the Senate. At the bar and in the Senate it is the same Daniel Webster who speaks. He himself said of the law : ^^I regard it as the great ornament and one of the chief defences and securities of free institutions. It is indispensable to and con- servative of public liberty. If I am anything, it is the law, that noble profession, that sublime science, that has made me what I am. . . . An eminent law- yer can not be a dishonest man. Tell me a man is dis- honest, and I will answer he is no lawyer. He can not be, because he is careless and reckless of justice ; the law is not in his heart, is not the standard and rule of his conduct." Here we have very nearly the key-note of Webster's oratory. It is the obligation of the law and of the (Constitution as the highest law. The principles which he advocated he ennobled and glorified as being in some way essential to the perfect working of this great system of law. Trained as a Puritan, his soul never freed itself from those prin- ciples of the Divine law which give reality and earn- estness to life and solemnity to duty ; never denied its responsibility to God, the thought of which respon- sibility Webster himself declared to be the greatest thought his mind had ever entertained. This man was a giant ; and he always moved with a gigantic de- liberation and power. Whether he pleads in the state courts for the punishment of crime and impress- es on the jury the sense of duty, omnipresent like the Deity, or instructs the Supreme Court of the nation as to the true meaning of the Constitution, or in the Senate Chamber deals death blows to political here- sies that would subvert the Constitution, he is always the same, — grave, earnest, grand. Here is no light play of the fancy ; but on rare occasions his imagina- ELOQUENCE AND THE LAW 73 tion takes a flight across expanses, which no fancy can traverse. Here are no harmless scintillations of wit and humor. His wit cuts, and his humor is grim. Here is no legal or constitutional or political empiri* cism, explaining the whole from observation of a part; it is science, explaining the parts from knowl- edge of the whole. Here is no insinuating advocate seeking to establish confidential relations with the jury. It is the Chief Justice, under Gk)d, laying down the law. Seemingly this man was of a nature cold and hard as his own New Hampshire granite. Ah, but there is a sublime power in the universe that can make even the mountains tremble. And so when the great occasion came to him and he stood in the Sen- ate pleading for the life of the nation, with what a sub- lime emotion did his soul kindle as his imagination pictured before him the possibilities of the future of the country — that future which we have seen with all its desolation of blood — ^and wrung from him that earnest prayer, which God in his infinite mercy grant- ed, by taking the great orator from the evil to come. The power of Webster's Reply to Hayne lies in the absolutely demonstrative character of the argu- ment, the positiveness of the speaker's convictions as to what was right, and his entire surrender to the feelings which naturally grew out of those convic- tions. Bead the account of the circumstances attending the delivery of that great speech. "He never rose on an ordinary occasion to address an ordinary audi- ence more self-possessed. The calmness of superior strength was visible everywhere; in countenance, voice, and bearing. A deep-seated conviction of the extraordinary character of the emergency and of his 74 ELOQUENCE AND THE LAW ability to control seemed to possess him wholly. It needed only his exordium to enchain the attention. As he went on there was scarcely a dry eye in the Senate; all hearts were overcome; grave judges and men grown old in dignified life turned aside their heads to conceal the evidences of their emotion. In one comer of the gallery was clustered a group of Massachusetts men. When he alluded to Ma^ssachu- setts, their feelings were strained to the highest ten- sion ; and when the orator, concluding his encomium on the land of their birth, turned, intentionally or otherwise, his burning eye full upon them, they shed tears like girls. The exulting rush of feeling with which he went through the peroration threw a glory over his countenance like inspiration. The swell and roll of his voice struck upon the ears of the spell- bound audience in deep and melodious cadence, as waves upon the shore of the far-resounding sea. The Miltonic grandeur of his words was the fit expression of the thought, and raised his hearers up to his theme. His voice, exerted to its utmost power, penetrated every recess or comer of the Senate, penetrated even the ante-rooms and stairways as he pronounced in deepest tones of pathos those words of solemn signifi- cance with which the great speech ends." Alas ! Alas ! Can you find this exulting confidence and earnestness in his memorable speech on the 7th of March, 1850? For some reason that speech was not in its tone what the country until within a few days had exi)ected. He no longer speaks for Massa- chusetts. Slavery is shown to be a patriarchal insti- tution not forbidden even by the teachings of Christ. He will vote for the Fugitive Slave Bill. He will not re-enact the law of God by which in virtue of ELOQUENCE AND THE LAW 75 climate slavery has been excluded from New Mexico. The Wilmot Proviso is unnecessary. Whenever Tex- as is ready to be divided into four slave states, he is ready to vote for them. Anti-slavery societies and publications have done great mischief. Gentlemen do not mean secession when they talk of it, and, with a glimmer of the old eloquence, it is over. Mr. Calhoun, his life-long opponent, the great apostle of slavery, was there to hear him — almost the last time he came to the Senate — ^to hear him and to approve of much that he said. What was the mat- ter with Webster? The old enthusiasm and earnest- ness which, on the 26th of January, 1830, had rung out through the ante-rooms and stairways of the Senate Chamber, as the last words of his great speech, ^^Liberty and union, now and forever, one and in- separable," were gone. And now in a contest in which the friends of freedom and of slavery were struggling for the control of unborn states and of the future policy of the nation, the great man, born and nurtured among the hills of New Hampshire, and representing freedom-loving Massachusetts, is giving aid and comfort to South Carolina and Geor- gia. He loved the Union, but something had gone out of him — something that in 1830 kindled his soul to the highest eloquence. My admiration for the great orator is almost unbounded. Men still say that his Seventh of March speech was a great speech. It was the great brain, still true to its life-long thought, the obligation of law ; but the great heart, full of love for freedom, is not there. True earnestness springs from deep convictions of truth and duty. "I have heard," says Emerson, ^^an experienced counsellor say, that he never feared the effect upon a jury of a lawyer who 76 ELOQUENCE AND THE LAW does not believe in his heart that his client ought to have a verdict. If he does not believe it, his unbelief will appear to the jury, despite all his protestations and will become their unbelief. This is that law whereby a work of art, of whatever kind, sets us in the same state of mind wherein the artist was when he made it. That which we do not believe we can not adequately say, though we may repeat the words never so often. It was this conviction which Sweden- borg expressed, when he described a group of per- sons in the spiritual world endeavoring in vain to articulate a proposition which they did not believe ; but they could not, though they twisted and folded their lips even to indignation.'' It is with an old civilization and established con- ditions of society somewhat as it is with the old age of an individual. The fiery eloquence, the words that move a whole people, belong for the most part to the age of unsolved questions of government and of new and revolutionary crises in history. Demosthenes si)eaks when Grecian liberty is in danger. Cicero, when the life of Rome is threatened by conspiracy. Chatham and the brilliant galaxy of British orators, when English policy was shaking the world. And Webster, Clay, Calhoun, Lincoln, Phillips, when questions were raised whose answers were to make the new world the brightest si)ot on earth, or were to extinguish here the light of liberty and republican government forever. Great occasions, great themes, made great men's souls thrill with the earnestness of true eloquence. Not twice in a thousand years does there come such an occasion as that which placed Abraham Lin- coln on the battlefield at Gettysburg, November, 1863, ELOQUENCE AND THE LAW 77 to consecrate the soldiers' cemetery. The "pajstj the present, and the future threw their converging rays upon him and marked him as the central figure of the continent and of the age. The slaughter and suf- fering of the past, the care and anguish of the pres- ent, the uncertainty and gloom of the future, min- gling with brighter memories of the more distant past and brighter possibilities of the more distant future, were to him as they must have been to any one, an inspiration, and drew from him those words, so characteristic, so tender, so full of feeling and of thoughts, which form a gem of oratory and will be cherished in the memory of men longer than any oth- er words which have been spoken by orator or poet in the last half century. Great occasions and great men are perhaps alike rare. But when the great occasion has come, the world has seldom suffered for the want of the great man to meet it. If we have now no Websters that can reply to Hayne, let us thank God that we have no Haynes that need to be replied to. If we have no Lincolns that can consecrate our Gettysburgs, let us thank God that we are not likely to have any Get- tysburgs that will need to be consecrated. Genius sometimes makes an orator, but very rare- ly a lawyer. Study, discipline, and culture are need- ed to perfect the latter. Take William Pitt, after- wards Lord Chatham, and William Murray, Lord Mansfield, as examples. No man ever ruled the British Commons with such absolute and imx>erious sway as Pitt. Yet, as Macaulay tells us, "he had never applied himself steadily to any branch of knowledge. He never became familiar even with the rules of the House of which he was the brightest ornament. He 78 ELOQUENCE AND THE LAW had never studied public law as a system; and was indeed so ignorant of the whole subject that George the Second, on one occasion, complained bitterly that a man who had never read Vattel should presume to undertake the direction of foreign affairs. But these defects were more than redeemed by high and rare gifts, by a strange power of inspiring great masses of men with confidence and affection, by an eloquence which not only delighted the ear, but stirred the blood and brought tears into the eyes, and by orig- inality in devising plans, and by vigor in executing them. Murray, on the other hand, is admitted to have been superior to Pitt as a debater, his mind more perfectly trained, his memory enriched with larger stores of knowledge, his argument more logical, his wealth of illustration greater, his copiousness and grace of diction unsurpassed. We can not but ad- mire the simplicity, the clearness, the candor, the absence of ostentation or of striving for effect, which characterize the public speeches of Murray and make him a delightful example of persuasive eloquence. But he was not highly emotional and had little power of moving the passions of others. In the terrible debates of the exciting period in which they lived, Pitt was perfectly at home. In the pitiless storm of his fiery eloquence, the passionless logic of Murray was as powerless to control Parliament as it would have been to restrain a mob. To be held up to odium as an enemy of his country by this fierce flam- ing angel of vengeance was more than Murray could stand. He therefore demanded and received the of- fice of Chief Justice and retired from the unpleasant conflicts of the lower house. Great jurist as he was, he was afraid of a man who had never studied law. ELOQUENCE AND THE LAW 79 and whOy if he had devoted himself to the practice of law in the courts, would in all probability have made a conspicuous failure; for the qualities which lifted Pitt so high above all his associates in Parliament, were just the qualities which it is most dangerous for a lawyer to depend upon. I suspect that the high tragedy which Lord Chatham made so great a success in the House of Lords a little more than a century ago, would to-day, if presented in the leg- islating bodies of either England or America, be most indecorously laughed at. The change which has taken place in public speaking during the last century can not be better seen than by comparing the House of (Commons when Pitt ruled it with the House of Commons of to-day. Then Pox with no knowledge of political economy led the opposition. Then Burke with his brilliant imagination and gor- geous rhetoric and saintly morality fired over the heads of hearers, si)eaking only to posterity. Then Sheridan with no real knowledge of political princi- ples held the House in the closest attention by his wit and his eloquence. Then every orator who as- pired to influence constructed his speech on rhetor- ical principles and adorned it with quotations from the Greek and Latin classics. Then eloquence was the one passport to high office in the state. But now, I quote the words of another, ^^government takes its place among the sciences, and mere in- tellectual cleverness unallied with experience, in- formation, and character, has little weight or in- fluence. The leaders of Conservatism and Liberal- ism are no longer men who have the art of manu- facturing polished and epigrammatic phrases, but those who are skilled in the arts of parliamentary 80 ELOQUENCE AND THE LAW fence and management, and who have made state- craft the study of their lives. These men, though they hem and haw and stammer and can hardly put their sentences together in logical order, take their seats on the Treasury Bench as Secretaries of State ; while the mere orators who have no special experi- ence or information sit on the back benches or be- low the gangway. The leading statesmen indulge in no such bursts of oratory as shook the House in the latter half of the eighteenth century. They state their views plainly, tersely, with little pre- ambling and little embellishment, and, having de- livered themselves of what they had to say, they conclude as abruptly as they began. And Mr. Glad- stone is the only orator who persists in trying to adorn his speeches with gems from the ancient clas- sics." If important questions and intense excitement could evoke the stormy and passionate eloquence of former times, surely these questions and this ex- citement have not been wanting during the last few years when Parliament has been considering the Irish question. The Americans have but a faint con- ception of the very deep feeling excited in England by the discussion. What has become of the old style eloquence? I remember well the scene when Mr. Porster made his great speech — for great speech it was — ^January 24th, 1881, in support of the Protec- tion Bill. Both Ck)nservatives and Liberals cheered him as he rose, marking their sense that this was no party question, but a question touching the in- tegrity of the Empire, a question of the Queen's authority where it is now challenged or overthrown, a question of the protection of the Queen's subjects ELOQUENCE AND THE LAW 81 in a part of her domain where loyalty and obedience to law have become dangerous. ^^There haye not been many occasions/' says the intelligent corre- spondent of the Tribune, "which made a greater de- mand on the minister's powers. He had to propose a measure in itself unwelcome to everybody, which had been resisted by a powerful section of his own party ; which was undoubtedly repugnant to his own feelings; which was sure to be met with screams of angry defiance from parts of the representatives of the country which it affected. He had to justify its introduction by such a description of the state of Ireland as should prove any less stringent measure to be insufficient for the maintenance, or rather for the restoration, of order. He had to explain why he had failed to govern Ireland with the ordinary weapons of the law, and to show that he had made the best use of these weapons, and that they had proved inadequate. A statement of this kind might tax the power of a great orator, and Mr. Forster is not a great orator. He is, however, a sagacious, sin- cere, experienced statesman, capable of saying plain things in a plain, clear way ; and his was perhaps a more useful and convincing statement than if it had been adorned with flowers of rhetoric and suf- fused with the persuasive passion of eloquence." The case was one calling simply for facts which would justify the Government. Without those facts the Government could not defend itself either with or without passionate eloquence. Those facts clearly presented constituted the most eloquent of all ap- peals to the British heart. And so the speech — ^a plain speech — ^was in a threefold degree successful. It actually added to the fame of the speaker. It 82 ELOQUENCE AND THE LAW was a complete vindication of the speaker from all the criticism and abuse which he had borne in dig- nified silence during the i>ast few months. But most of all, it accomplished the object for which he spoke, so that, as an English writer of authority of that day remarks, "when Mr. Porster sat down, it is not too much to say that there were not twenty members of the House, outside the ranks of the Home Rulers, who were not convinced that in the presence of such a state of things, it was impossible to think of refusing the powers demanded by the Gov- ernment." What more than this could Pitt, or Pox, or Burke have accomplished? What better illustra- tion than this do we need, that legislation is no longer a matter of passion but that government now takes its place among the sciences? The public speaking of our country is to-day much more distinctly marked by argument than by striking eloquence. The supremacy of reason over passion is thereby plainly recognized. The dark days of '60 and '61 and the more awful months from* '61 to '65 called forth no more real eloquence than did the discussion of slavery and the compro- mise measures ten years before. And the latter pe- riod of 1850 could show nothing to compare with the great debates of nearly twenty years earlier date. And few of the si>eeche8 of 1830 equal in earnest- ness and intensity of passion the speeches of Otis, Henry, and others of Revolutionary fame. Passion wears out after a while in nations as in men. Prom the first experiment of a new re- public, with its system of government to be settled and tried, on through all the varying mysteries of debt, and taxes, and finance, protection and free ELOQUENCE AND THE LAW 83 trade, slavery and freedom, war and peace, rebel- lion, emancipation, the assassination of the president, and the reconstruction of conquered states, it seems as if we had passed through every experience which could naturally agitate a nation like ours. It is not likely that there will be any event in the near future which will call forth an Uncle Tom's Cabin for the nation to weep over. It is not likely, €h>d grant that it may never be likely, that this nation will ever witness such scenes of terror and blood as France has witnessed. The thoughtful student, the true patriot, and the honest Christian will certainly do all in their i>ower to avert the possibility of anarchy, by making justice and judgment the habi- tation of our government, and causing mercy and truth to go before us as a people. Men will discuss questions as they rise into prominence, bringing what light they can from the experience of the past and seeking wisdom for the future from that past. But it is almost as certain as anything in the future can be, that the profound emotion under which men have spoken when the fate of the country and the fate of humanity seemed to hang upon their words, will be less and less apparent in our national Con- gress and less and less to be exi>ected in political discussions. The change has come. Men ask for instruction, light, knowledge — not for rhetoric and passion. They must be fed on facts, substance — not on words and tropes. But let the world change as it may, one thing will remain unchanged. We must all die — and af- ter death the judgment — or what? What shall be man's character and so what his relations to God, here and hereafter — this is a theme which will be 84 ELOQUENCE AND THE LAW new as long as men continue to die, new to each man, new to each generation of men. Whether we will or not, it forces itself upon our attention. The death of every great man, who dies with his coun- try's honors heaped high upon him, calls our attention to this question. Every scholar cultured to the ut- most with study and learning, who goes from us, makes us ask, " Where is he?" and "What has be- come of his keen intellect, his grand attainments." Your fathers — where are they? The question takes many of us in imagination into the unseen world and forces us to think of the old problem of immor- tality. Now, miserable indeed is the clergyman who must speak on eternal themes without realizing their importance; but to him who really feels the power of an endless life, no other theme can be so full of eloquence. It is in the pulpit, therefore, that we have a right to expect eloquence to linger longest, and to cease only when men no longer have need of God. And what the pulpit in the exercise of its high prerogative, its divine mission especially needs, is a larger infusion into sacred eloquence, of the freedom, boldness, and strength which distinguish our secular oratory. As then the lawyer, as a good citizen, may well find his place in the church on Sunday, that the clergyman may make him acquainted with the ob- ligations of the higher law, so the clergyman might often, with great profit to himself and his people, study in the court room the methods by which the successful lawyer convinces and persuades. The com- mon sense, the definiteness of purpose, the clear- ness of statement, the logical connection of thought, the discriminating judgment, and the moral earnest- ELOQUENCE AND THE LAW 85 ness there employed to gain the ascendancy in things seen and temporal^ he might with great advantage take with him to his pulpit, and there use them to impress upon his hearers the incomparably greater importance of the things that are unseen and eternal. THE LEGAL PROFESSION AS A CONSERVA- TIVE FORCE IN OUR REPUBUC ♦ « Mr. President and Oentlemen of the Lavo School: There is a great difference between the ideal and the actnal in every profession. Very few men in any profession realize their own ideals. But not the less, we must all have ideals and must seek to reach them, if we would ever attain to anything better than the very commonplace work which oc- cupies the attention of most men in all professions. And there are a few men, who, if they do not reach their own ideals, at least make themselves ex- amples of the very highest success and power. There are such men in the ministry. Who can fail to think of the great man who for fifty years filled the pulpit of this church — Leonard Bacon? There are such men in the law; and while, perhaps, our minds, in searching for them, would not naturally turn at once to the bar of this city, I can not but recall my early impressions as a student in the college, and later in this Law School, and the ad- miration which I felt for Baldwin, Kimberly, Inger- soU, Blackman, Dutton, and others who have passed away, as well as for several eminent lawyers who still live to adorn the profession of their choice. ^Delivered before the graduftting class at the sixty-eighth anni- ▼ersary of Yale Law School, Jane 28th» 1892. -7 88 THE LEGAL PROFESSION AS A I have never ceased to regard the law as "one of the first and noblest of human sciences — a sci- ence," if I may slightly change the expression of Burke, "which does more to quicken and invigorate the understanding" than any other. I believe that the study of law is admirably fitted to equip a man intellectually even for the ministry of the Gospel, a profession in popular conception as far as possible removed from the law; and that no training will better fit a speaker for his work than the careful study of the methods by which the successful advo- cate carries conviction to the minds of a court and jury. Moreover, no study is more valuable than the law to the man who is to engage in business under the complicated system of modern life; while to the future legislator and statesman it is absolutely in- dispensable. I wish, therefore, that it were com- mon for young men to pursue the systematic study of law, even though they do not intend to practice law as a profession. With high hopes for the edu- cational development of the young state in which I live, I have been greatly cheered by the presence in our Law School, of many young men who do not intend to follow the law as a profession, but are seeking in its study that culture and knowledge which will be of service to them in almost any pos- sible pursuit in which they may engage. It is not, however, the study of law, to which I invite your attention to-day. I propose to speak of the legal profession as a conservative force in our republic. I shall try to show that it is such a force, shall point out some ways in which it may be more useful than at present, and finallv shall call attention to some facts which CONSERVATIVE FORCE 89 emphasize the special need of such a force at the present time. Our system of government is unquestionably ex- cellent. Under it we have liberty without license and order without oppression. It may not be per- fect; but, perfect or imperfect, it is so good that we wish to preserve it. The division of power between the nation and the states, and between the states and the smaller political units that compose the states; the division of the government into executive, legis- lative, and judicial branches ; the freedom and equali- ty of the people practically guarantied by the C!on- stitution; these are all so excellent that we would not willingly change them. The experience of more than a century has proved the wisdom of the fathers who established this government. The accumulated blessings of a century of free government are ours. Whatever advances we may now make must be made in a conservative spirit that shall preserve what has already been secured. A true conservative spirit is not opposed to reform when needed ; but it recognizes the fact that mere change is not reform — only change for the better is reform — ^and that this should be sought within existing institutions and not by de- stroying them. It proves all things; but it holds fast that which is good. No profession in our country is, or by reason of its nature ought to be, more conservative than the law. Every lawyer is a sworn minister of justice; and "justice," as Webster said, "is the great interest of man on earth. It is the ligament which holds civilized beings and civilized nations together. Wherever her temple stands and as long as it is honored, there is a foundation for social security, gen- 90 THE LEGAL PROFESSION AS A eral happinese, and the improvement and progress of onr race." The legal profession is devoted to the administration of justice under existing laws. It does not ask what the law ought to be. It merely asks what the law is and what is right under the law as it is. Barely does it happen to a lawyer^ as it did to Erskine in his arguments on the Bights of British Juries and in defence of Stockdale, to an- ticipate legislation by presenting to the court a jus- tice higher than the law; and few lawyers, if they attempted to do so, would expect or deserve the success which attended Erskine's bold exp^iment Ciourts can decide what is law, but they can not make laws. Where, therefore, the laws are good, the con- servatism of the bar as represented in the courts, is invaluable. No real interest can be assailed that the law will not protect if it be appealed to. No new law can be made which violates the fundamental principles of government, that the courts will not at once pronounce unconstitutional. Passion may clam- or, as it often does, for ew post facto laws, for laws which involve a violation of the obligation of con- tracts, or for laws which impair freedom of thought or speech or religion ; but the courts throw all such laws out as fast as an abnormal legislature can pass them. And the higher we ascend in our appeal to the courts, the more stable, independent, and con- servative do the courts become, so that the man who really wants nothing but what is just, finds the courts a refuge from even unfriendly legislation. The student of law learns at the very beginning of his studies that law is the highest wisdom of or- ganized society, expressed as a rule of conduct, com- manding what is right and prohibiting what is CONSERVATIVE FORCE 91 wrong. It is grounded on certain first principles existing in the nature and fitness of things. These principles have been derived from reason and ex- I>erience9 from the customs of our ancestors, from the civil law, and from the golden rule of Christian morality. "On this basis, our courts have erected the noble fabric of jurisprudence ; they have adjusted the various parts with the nicest symmetry; and a deviation from any fundamental principle deranges the whole superstructure." Under a system thus I>erfected, laws may change but law does not change. Uniformity of practice, the faithful following of prec- edent, a regard for the "whole system," these, no matter how much individual laws may change, in- sure that "permanent, uniform rule in the adminis- tration of justice which is the ultimate object of gov- ernment." The symmetry, perfection, and existence of the whole legal structure depend upon the con- servation of existing institutions. The ideal court has but one standard for every case it tries — ^that is justice as expressed in the law. It is bound to a uniformity of interpretation and is controlled in its principles of interpretation by its obligation to unnumbered precedents from the beginning of our national life and even from the establishment of justice. It deals, therefore, with its suitors as if they were unknown — mere abstract representations of principles. Its decisions come like the answer to an algebraic problem without partiality, even as the unknown quantities in the problem are subjected to the operation of undeviating mathematical principles in order to determine their value. If there is any departure from this absolute impartiality and im- personality in the administration of justice, it is no 92 THE LEGAL PROFESSION AS A fault of the system, do fault of the law, but the fault of the men who represent and administer jus- tice, either because they are unworthy to preside in the temple of justice, or, being worthy, they are yet incapable of becoming mere intellectual and judicial machines, but are men still in spite of being judges. Bo far as the legal system is concerned, it contem- plates and intends such an administration of justice as will inspire all men with confidence in its fairness and impartiality, and will thus make all men con- tent with things as they are, — a matter of the gravest importance in the present age. A legislature is composed of men who are not ex- pected to be dispassionate and impartial, of men who have been elected because they represent fixed opin- ions and are committed to a certain policy. Bills for public acts in harmony with the principles of the majority are passed under the excitement of fiery partisan declamation or with the stolid discipline of a silent but resistless majority. No one expects argument to have much influence — the more shame to us. The people settled everything at the polls when they elected the legislature. The legislators have been sent to the Capital to correct abuses, or to restore the golden age, and they must do it. Most of them have no idea how it is to be done, but there are usually two or three members who know all about it. The rest vote for everything which seems in good faith intended to bring about the de- sired result. They finally go home with grave doubts as to the coming of the golden age, but, as they have faithfully voted for everything in sight that the leaders of a golden age party could propose, they doubtless are able to give a satisfactory explanation CONSERVATIVE FORCE 93 of their want of success to the disappointed constit- uents who expected their representative to bring the golden age home with him. Here, then, we have legislation by men who simply represent the passion and prejudice of a popular election. Fairness and justice under such conditions are impossible except as the passion and prejudice of the majority may happen to be just. Legislatures thus cease to be councils of wise men seriously deliberating for the welfare of the state, and become almost as powerless, so far as original thought and independent action are concerned, as presidential electors. Hence, govern- ment by the people comes to be government by party, and so largely government by caucus, and finally government by unreason. But in a court of justice we have a very different spectacle. Here, at least, is a place where facts and arguments have some influence on decisions, and where mere passionate declamation and appeals to prejudice can not govern. The most sedulous care has been taken to secure both judge and jury who are entirely free from any prejudice respecting the mat- ter in issue. Indeed so careful are we in this par- ticular that we exclude from the jury every man who is suspected of knowing anything about the matter in issue, and in some states this is carried so far as to exclude from the jury every man who knows anything. Under such conditions decisions may be wrong; but they are not often intentionally wrong. Nothing else is so conservative of our institutions as justice; and in our courts we have for the most part as perfect examples of justice as can be seen till men cease to be fallible in judgment. Again, the legal profession is a conservative force on account of 94 THE LEGAL PROFESSION AS A its power. It has received, directly and indirectly, great power in trust for the conservation of our in- stitutions. The responsibility incident to this trust makes the legal profession careful and conservative; while the power committed to it enables it to con- serve our institutions as no other body of men can without force and violence. If we as a people are to be divided into distinct classes according to our occupations, and each class is to look upon the others, not as fellow citizens having a common interest in the welfare of the country, but as enemies seeking to get all they can and rob others of all they can, the people of the country might well look at the legal profession with jealousy and with a determina- tion to strip it of some of its power; and if the lawyers of the country were not in truth ministers of justice, faithful to their clients of whatever oc- cupation, just in their decisions as judges and wise as legislators; if they were seeking to aggrandize their own profession at the expense of other profes- sions and interests, it would be easy to justify ap- prehensions on the part of men of other occupa- tions, and a desire, even now sometimes expressed, to restrict the power of the bar; for surely nowhere else has the bar as a profession been given such power as in this country, and no other profession has been given such power here. First of all, the Su- preme Court, with all its far-reaching power, is com- posed wholly of lawyers; and it is safe to say, con- sidering the number of lawyers who have filled the presidential chair, that a majority of the justices of the Supreme Court have been appointed to that po- sition by lawyers. Our Constitution was framed by lawyers; its adoption was secured by lawyers; its CONSERVATIVE FORCE 95 character and meaning have been established by law- yers; and the government of the country is con- ducted to-day, under that Constitution, by lawyers. The president of the country is a lawyer, and the next president doubtless will be a lawyer. The legis- lative branch of the government is as effectually in the hands of lawyers as are the other two. Sixty-two members of the Senate are lawyers and only twenty- six are engaged in other professions or occupations. All but five of the states have at least one lawyer in the Senate, one of these five being Vermont, which, from time immemorial till now, has been represent- ed by able lawyers ; and twenty-two states are repre- sented in the Senate by lawyers exclusively. In the House of Representatives, a House elected under most abnormal conditions, when the convulsion of nature manifested in the earthquake felt all through the country, might have been expected to bring to the surface the sons of the soil if anything could, there are yet one hundred and ninety-eight lawyers, and only one hundred and thirty-four of other occupations, of whom only fifty are farmers or planters. There are only nine states of whose delegation in the lower House at least half are not lawyers. The great agri- cultural states are as fully represented by lawyers as most of the others; Indiana, for example, has one physician and twelve lawyers, and Kentucky, one farmer and ten lawyers. This is a truly alarm- ing situation if the lawyers are banded together for the benefit of their profession or of their wealthy cli- ents at the expense of the rest of the country ; but a most happy condition indeed, if, as I think is the fact, the lawyers are as patriotic as any other class of citi- zens and differ from them in no respect except in the 96 THE LEGAL PROFESSION AS A possession of greater knowledge of our laws and insti- tutions. They are no close corporation. The way is open to every one who has the requisite qualiflcationSy to become a member of this most honorable and most influential guild, and so to become eligible to the highest seats of power that are assigned only to mem- bers of this profession. The greatest constitutional lawyer the country has seen was the son of a New Hampshire farmer. The man exists before the lawyer. The lawyer is simply the man educated for special work. What- ever of honor or patriotism the man had, the law- yer will have. Any view of the profession, therefore^ as a band of selfish and unscrupulous foes to the rest of society, of whatever grade, is supremely fool- ish. The services rendered to this country by the legal profession have been so immense that nothing^ but the prejudice of ignorance can account for ap- prehensions sometimes expressed as to the dangerous: influence of the profession. When the nation mur- murs at the presence in the seats of the Senate Chamber of large numbers of men of great wealth, some of whom are more than suspected of having^ gained their seats by their money, the murmurs are not unreasonable. When men, smarting under busi- ness reverses and a load of debt incident to repeated failures of crops, complain that lawyers fill the judges' benches and will not permit measures for relief inconsistent with our established system of jus- tice, the complaints are at least natural, in view of the blinding power of self-interest. But when, as a remedy, men are sent to Congress on account of their deficient wardrobe, or judges are elected on account of their ignorance of law, the step from the sublime CONSERVATIVE FORCE 97 to the ridiculous is taken^ and any farther steps- in the same direction will be steps from honor to- shame, and from safety to peril. The Constitution of the United States containa no provisions which can protect ns from all possible evils. Unwise legislation , though not expressly au- thorized, is nowhere forbidden; and it is not uncom- mon either in the national Congress or the state legis- latures. But the Constitution does insure to us the- enjoyment of those great rights and privileges with whose existence injustice of any kind even by legis- lative act is incompatible. It is upon these great provisions of the Constitution, assuring perfect, equality of all before the law, and not only equality but a royal inheritance of rights for all, that the people rest content. And so long as the administra- tion of justice in the courts is seen to be uniform and impartial, there will be no public discontent of any magnitude that will seek to destroy the Con- stitution or the courts which interpret it. The ground-swell of popular passion may lift and does lift legislatures that largely float on the surface of I)opular feeling; but it will not disturb the depths in which reposes our Constitution, resting on foun- dations of eternal justice which God himself has laid ; nor will it disturb, nor seek seriously to disturb,, those ministers of justice who, as judges, interpret, the Constitution and impartially dispense its bless- ings to all. I repeat, laws may change, but law abides. Legislators will obey the behests of their masters who elect them. But our Constitution and our system of jurisprudence rest upon foundations- somewhat less transitory than popular passion, and they have hitherto been interpreted in such a spirit. 98 THE LEGAL PROFESSION AS A m as to command the respect and approval of all classes of our people. Popular unrest has not yet led to any serious assault upon these; nor will it lead to such assault so long as the administration of justice remains impartial. But is it impartial? If it be^ by what singular accident does it happen that ques- tions which specially concern political parties are, when submitted to the courts^ so generally decided according to the views of the party to which a ma- jority of the judges belong? That they have been so decided, can hardly, I think, be denied. The Elec- toral Commission, that composite body of statesmen and jurists that decided the presidential election in 1876, was divided in opinion as to what was just, exactly as a commission would have been divided if made up from the conventions of the two political parties. Not a Senator, nor a Representative, nor a Supreme Court judge, whose opinion of the law was not affected by his party views. Curious, was it not, that such great men as composed that commis- sion, should be unable to judge of the facts and the law without party bias? Yet it is perfectly certain that they were unable to free themselves from this bias, otherwise the line of separation in opinion, wherever else it might have been drawn, would not have exactly coincided with the line of party. Judges are human, and their minds reach con- clusions by the same processes as other well-trained minds. Where the law is not clear and settled, de- cisions will undoubtedly be affected by other consider- ations. This is nothing new, nor is it alarming so far as it has yet gone. Chief Justice Mansfield was undoubtedly one of the noblest men and one of the ablest judges that ever adorned the King's Bench in CONSERVATIVE FORCE 99 England; yet it is said of him that he was <^emi- nently sound and just in his decisions where his polit- ical convictions were not involved." Gup own Chief Justice Marshall, one of the great judges not only of our country, but of the world, was a Federalist and he gave Federalist decisions. A writer of authority has said that ^^in many of the cases before him, he could have given opposite decisions, had he been so minded, and as matter of pure law these opposite de- cisions would have been just as good as those which he did give. Ploughing in fresh ground, he could run his furrows in what direction he thought best, and could make them look straight and workmanlike. He had no rocks in the shape of authorities, no confus- ing undulations in collections of adjudications tend- ing 'in one or another direction. He was making law; he had only to be logical and consistent in the manufacture He made Federalist law in nine cases out of ten, and made it in strong, shapely fashion." But how is this consistent with impartiality? I will let Marshall's biographer answer. ^'It is one thing to be impartial and another to be colorless in mind. Judge Marshall was impartial and strongly possessed of the judicial instinct or faculty. But he was by no means colorless. He could no more eliminate from his mind an interest in public affairs and opin- ions as to the preferable forms of government and methods of administration, than he could cut out and cast away his mind itself. Believing that the C!on- stitution intended to create and did create a national government, and, having decided notions as to what such a government must be able to do, he was subject to a powerful though insensible influence to find the existence of the required abilities in the govern- 100 THE LEGAL PROFESSION AS A ment. ♦ ♦ ♦ The meaning which the words had for him ineyitably seemed their natural and proper mean- ing. Thus in all cases of doubt the decision must re- Hect the complexion of his mind." This was all very well for Judge Marshall in his peculiar relations to a new government ; but nothing 'Could be more dangerous at the present time than for judges to interpret law according to their notions of political expediency. At the same time no judge is called on to throw away his common sense and do violence to his own mind in order to prove his political or judicial impartiality. It is well for the country that Judge Marshall was sulHciently inde- pendent to render the decisions he did ; and it is one of the pleasant incidents in the clash of parties ■and the varying opinions respecting public men^ that one of the highest eulogies ever pronounced on Chief Justice Marshall, was delivered here, on an occasion like this, by a Democratic vice-president of the United States. The immediate successor of Judge Marshall, -Chief Justice Taney, has had great odium cast upon liim by reason of the Dred Scott decision, and cer- tainly no decision in the history of our country more strikingly illustrates the power of political feeling over the judiciary. No doubt a multitude of people l)elieve that Taney was an inferior lawyer, who, ow- ing his appointment to his political services, debased his office by his subjection to party. In this, great injustice has been done both to his ability and his i^haracter. It gave me great pleasure a few years tigo to receive from the lips of Justice Miller of the Supreme Court, a man of conspicuous ability and nnecticut, the courts have been asked to exercise unusual powers and have given decisions that show a reasonable desire on the part of the judges to be impartial and judicial rather than partisan. Our courts must be thus impartial, must rise above party feeling, must decide in favor of what is right, let who will be disappointed, or the strong- est bulwark of our system of government will begin to crumble. The more confidence we can feel that the Bench, by a mysterious alchemy of its own, neu- tralizes the partisan feeling of its occupant, the bet- ter it will be for the country. But if judges are not free from party feel- ing and are liable to be influenced by it, what can we do to provide a remedy? Not very much, certainly* But this, at least, can be done and should be done. The tenure of oflice of judges should be made de* X)endent as little as possible on party support. The bar should be made a unit in presenting the best men as candidates and in demanding of all political parties such reciprocity as will leave no judge to feel that his election has been secured by one party and his office can be retained only by fidelity to that party. Once elected, every judge should feel that his con- tinuance in office depends on his ability and faith- fulness in discharging his duties and that nothing will so surely bring his official life to an early end as partisanship. It is only thus that we can hope to have an honest and impartial judiciary — a judiciary 104 THE LEGAL PROFESSION AS A not indifferent to political principles and yet as just as learning and integrity can be. The state of Minnesota has been under the con- trol of one political party ever since its first governor retired from office more than thirty years ago. Yet a leading journal of the minority party in the state recently asserted that ^^Minnesota has to-day al- most an ideal non-partisan judiciary. There are on the Btate Supreme Bench five judges, four of whom are Republicans and one a Democrat On the Dis- trict Bench of the state there are twenty-nine judges, of whom eighteen are Republicans and eleven Dem- ocrats, and at times, notwithstanding the large Re- publican majority in the state, the Democrats have actually had more fudges than the Republicans." Such a condition of things may show ^^bad politics," as the phrase now is, on the part of the Republican majority, but it shows good sense and true patriot- ism. For if our courts ever become thoroughly par- tisan like our legislatures, justice will be at an end ; the Rob Roy of politics will govern us according to his own law That they shall take who have the power And they shall keep who can not indeed cattle, but that which is immeasurably more valuable than the cattle upon a thousand hills, the political rights of a whole people. The duty which the legal profession owes to the country is not fully discharged by its services in the courts. Laws are often imperfect. Those who best know the laws, best know what is needed to make them better. While their duty as lawyers is to secure justice under the laws as they are, their CONSERVATIVE FORCE 105 duty as citizens is no less imperative to enlighten their fellow citizens respecting all possible improve- ments in the laws, and especially in reference to those laws under which a considerable number of the people of the country are seen to be restless and dissatisfied. Great movements of the people outside of old party lines for the redress of grievances through i)olitical reform always mean that there is trouble somewhere which needs to be investigated. Guizot is right when he says that ^^the essence of government by no means resides in compulsion, in the exercise of brute force ; it consists more especially of a system of means and -powen conceived for the purpose of discovering on all occasions what is best to be done; for the purpose of discovering the truth which of. right ought to govern society; for the pur- pose of persuading all men to acknowledge this truth, to adopt and respect it willingly and freely.'' Under our government the people must acknowledge this truth which of right ought to govern, or government will be at an end. We depend entirely on the will- ingness of the people to execute the laws; and ^^gov- ernment possesses no power adequate to the con- trol of the physical power of the people." "Obedience to the laws is the vital condition of the social com- pact." However mistaken, therefore, great move- ments among the people may be, they deserve at least a careful study by all who love their country and would serve her. If there are evils which legis- lation can remedy, it should remedy them; and no class of people can do so much to bring this about as the members of the legal profession. As an emi- nent living lawyer has said, ^^henever the laws themselves are imperfect or unjust, I insist upon the 106 THE LEGAL PROFESSION AS A duty of those who know them best and know best how to improve them, to make this knowledge available for the public good." There is in this country altogether too much un- fairness in legislation of a party character; and against this the legal profession ought to set its face as a flinty not merely against what is technically un- constitutional, but against what is unfair and wrong, and alien to that justice in whose temple they serve. No legislation of this class is more dangerous than that which seeks to give a party undue power by an unfair division of states into congressional and legis- lative districts, of which we already have an alarming number of examples. It will not do for respectable gentlemen to look on while these things are done and merely shrug their shoulders and smile, content that the rascality shall go on, provided it works for the advantage of their party, and they themselves are recognized as merely looking on; it will not do for these respectable gentlemen to cry out like Macbeth, when the full enormity of the deed appears, "Thou canst not say I did it." You can not innocently stand by and see a murder committed in cold blood, and neither try to prevent nor to punish it. The Gerrymander is the deadliest assassin's stab aimed at the heart of justice that has ever been devised. It is the most gigantic of all grand larcenies, the larceny of a people's rights. No matter where it exists or when or how it began, no matter whether it be ven- erable with antiquity and free from original taint of injustice, as in Connecticut, or whether it be fresh in its infamy, as in states where it has just appeared, let it by all means be swept out of existence every- where and be buried in an eternal grave. This nation CONSERVATIVE FORCE 107 can live and prosper only by justice; and this justice forbids the accidental majority to-day in any state to gag and bind for all time the accidental minority. We imi>eril the good of all when we favor or con- nive at such deadly wrongs as perhaps only revolu- tions can repair or avenge. No man can foretell the future, but in the light of what we have already passed through in some parts of our country, and, with the rapid change in population by immigration and emigration, what we are liable to encounter in any part of our country, political cyclones that sweep everything before them ; storm clouds, filled with the strangest combination of elements, before which no party can stand; in view of this, we can see the im- perative necessity of guarding in every way possible the justice of our country. If the elements of dis- content ever get control, you may be sure that "the villainy you teach them they will execute, and it shall go hard, but," like Shylock, "they will better the in- struction." It would be a grave mistake, however, to suppose that any considerable number of our people desire to subvert our institutions. Organized labor may, un- der the pressure of distress, in its groping for relief, seize upon measures that seem to promise well, but that in reality are incompatible with the fundamental principles of justice and of economic wisdom as well. But this is not because organized labor desires to destroy our institutions, but merely because it does not at the moment see what the entire results of the proposed measures would be. Organized labor wants just what every good citizen wants, that which is best for the country. The trouble is not Jess to find out what that is, than to get it. lOS THE LEGAL PROFESSION AS A The power of the people under onr Bystem of gov- erninent to change onr laws and onr institutions without any violent revolution, is unquestionable. Even under the most unfavorable (Jerrymander that could be devised, there is not a legislature in the country, of which the wage-earners could not elect an overwhelming majority if they chose, with all the executives in the country including the president of the United States, nor would the absolute control of the judiciary, national and state, be much longer delayed. How we are to be governed, what sort of laws we are to have, how these laws are to be inteiv preted and executed, all depends ultimately on the wishes of the people — the toiling, restless masses, if you please, for these by their numbers are the people, and nothing can prevent their gaining complete con- trol of every department of government, state and national alike, except divisions among themselves. These divisions exist to-day, and will continue to exist as long as the measures proposed to be carried by combination are not wiser and more reasonable than those that have heretofore been proposed. A perfect combination will never be possible unless it is made necessary by the failure of justice. The moment it becomes necessary, it will become possible. Such a contingency is not to be greatly dreaded, pro- vided the people who thus come into i)ower have been educated to such an extent as we may reasonably ex- pect under our system of public education. To be governed by ignorance, passion, and prejudice, would be an unspeakable calamity; but to be governed by industry, intelligence, and patriotism, is no calamity at all. The great problem, then, that demands our constant attention, is the wise education of the peo- CONSERVATIVE FORCE 109 pie. The older states have always attended to this with more or less liberality ; and the new states, most or all of them, have magnificent school funds. No other agency does so much to assimilate and unify the different races that are fast filling up our country as the public schools. No other agency does so much to bring together and make acquainted with one an- other, the children of different races, parties, creeds, and so to Americanize them from the first. No other agency does so much to awaken a common spirit of enthusiasm for our free institutions and for our coun- try. But education does not make men content to be treated unjustly or to be trampled on or to be doomed to eternal inferiority, when something better is pos- sible. These educated masses know very well that, for their redemption from political wrongs, they have no need to resort to the bullet, because the ballot can gain for them everything which was ever gained by the bloodiest of revolutions. An intelligent people, no matter of what class or of what occupation, will desire such i)olitical action as will be best for them- selves, and in the end it will be found that what is best for the majority is best for all. The men who are intelligent, and the men who own proi>erty or hope to own proi>erty, are, and are likely to continue to be for a long time to come, much more numerous than the illiterate and the men who neither own nor hoi)e to own property. They are not likely to consent to any constitutional change by which the right of private proi)erty shall be destroyed either by a direct assumption of all property by the state or by the more insidious process of single tax confiscation of the fruits of a man's industry and self-denial. Of course there, are elements in some of our large cities 110 THE LEGAL PROFESSION AS A not destitute of education, but bo utterly bad that they are ready for any change, however bloody and destructive. But as yet, these anarchists constitute a very inconsiderable part of our population and are little to be feared except as the insane crank is to be feared, who, careless of his own life, may succeed in taking most valuable lives of others. So long as our country is not over-populated, so long as new land can be obtained almost for the asking, so long as a permanent home and a supporting income can be in- sured by honest industry, the great majority of our people will remain, as they are, law-abiding and law- respecting. But if the time should ever come, as I pray God it may not come, when the same conditions which make poverty in London so common and so pitiable, such conditions as have existed largely in Europe, and have made the common people spend lives of little comfort, and have caused multitudes of them to seek for something better in our own land, — ^if such conditions should ever come to exist here, our people, accustomed for generations to com- fort and plenty, would never endure these new con- ditions which the poor of Europe have endured for ages with only an occasional outbreak of frenzied despair and which the poor of Asia endure at the present time with the same senseless patience as that with which their ancestors have endured it for untold years in the past. Allow not nature more than nature needs, Man's life is cheap as beast's. A people who, like the toilers of our country, have known comfort, learning, and comparative luxury, can never be brought down to the beast*s estate and CONSERVATIVE FORCE 111 be made to put up with simply what "nature needs." Especially will our people rebel against such condi- tionsy if these conditions are brought about by unjust legislation, by the want of proper legislation, by un- due privileges and powers granted to wealthy cor- porations, or by any operation by which the things necessary for the comfort of life are placed beyond the reach of common labor to secure, and by which the fortunate few fatten on the miseries of the many. While no such peril stares us in the face at the present moment, while the products of our land and of our mines and of our manufactories are abundant, while territories that thirty years ago were supposed to be almost worthless are now able to furnish bread for the world, while a single great crop like that of last year, when Providence literally "opened the win- dows of heaven and poured us out a blessing that there was not room enough to receive it," can enable thousands of farmers to pay for their farms and can transform complaining and despairing men into cheer- ful and optimistic citizens, it is for us, in this hour of prosperity and peace, to provide for the time sure to come, when nature will be less prodigal of her boun- ties, when business depressions will be followed by suffering, unrest, and complaints on the part of the people, and when the wild rage of helpless failures will call into existence a thousand perilous schemes for transforming our political and social system, for which ignorance and misery with united voices will clamor. No preparation for such a time can be better than absolute and impartial justice in the laws and in their administration. Every unwholesome law should be wiped off the statute book ; and such measures of wise foresight should be adopted as will retard rather 112 THE LEGAL PROFESSION AS A than accelerate the separation of onr people into classes whose distinctions are poverty and wealth, and as will prevent the selfishness and greed of a few from becoming the occasion of the rnin of all. It is the merest commonplace to say that this country needs more patriotism and less partisanship, more brotherhood and less selfishness. Yet it is a com- monplace of mighty import, and one whose teaching is strangely overlooked. Nothing that we prize, from the Supreme Court down, is secure for the future un- less defended by justice. We must place the welfare of the nation, which is merely the welfare of the people, before the success of party, and must be willing to support every good measure, no matter with what party it originates, and to resist every bad measure though it originate with our own party, if we would make the future safe. We are destined, gentlemen, even in your day, to see more serious social complications than we have yet experienced ; complications to meet which will re- quire a more advanced and nobler political science than we have learned; and I am watching to see whether, in the coming crisis, the patriotism of the country will again rise above party, as it did in '61, and will deal with these matters in such a way as will promote the prosperity and happiness of our en- tire people, and preserve to coming generations, the government established by our fathers as "a govern- ment of the people, by the people, and for the people." INAUGURAL ADDRESS* Mr. President and Oentlemen of the Board of Re- gents, Ladies and Oentlemen: I am very grateful for the words of welcome and of congratulation which have been Bi)oken by my hon- ored predecessor. Dr. Polwell, and by the repre- sentatives of the regents, the faculty, the alumni, and the students of the University; and not less grateful for the hearty welcome given me by the state of Min- nesota, as represented on this occasion by the sov- ereign people in this most gracious assembly. I am the more grateful because this welcome has been given me after a year's administration of the Univer- sity, when I am no longer a stranger, but in some measure known to you all. It will always be pleasant to me to receive your approbation; it will be even more pleasant to deserve it The first English colonies established on our shores were exceedingly slow in their development. The settlers had come from England in pursuit, not of wealth, but of freedom. They were poor, and were willing to be poor, if they might only secure that which they valued more than wealth — liberty of thought and of conscience. They were earnest men, who discriminated wisely between the externals of life and the real essentials of manhood. From the first, ^Delivered at the University of Minnesota, June 11th, 1885, at the close of one year's service as president of the University. 114 INAUGURAL ADDRESS they placed a high value upon education; and before they were able to provide even comfortable dwellings for the shelter of their families, they established schools for the education of their children. Anxious for the higher education of young men who should be teachers and guides in church and state, they founded, at an early day, colleges as the neces- sary means for preserving a proper moral and intel- lectual life. As might be expected from the poverty of the people, the growth of these colleges was very slow. Yale College had an existence of eighteen years before its graduating class numbered ten men ; it was forty-seven years before its graduating class num- bered thirty ; and it was a full century and a quarter before a graduating class numbered one hundred. The number of students was not more insignificant than were the resources of the college, the teaching force, the studies, the apparatus, and the library. The phenomenal growth of the state of Minnesota during the last quarter of a century stands in marked contrast to the painfully slow growth of the early col- onies on the Atlantic coast. The increase in popula- tion and wealth has been in entire harmony with the changed condition of travel, industry, trade, and re- sources, which two centuries have produced. True to the enlightened instincts of the American people, Min- nesota has established a most beneficent system of public education as a first essential, and has crowned that system with a university for the free education of her sons and daughters. It might naturally be ex- pected that the growth of the University would keep pace with the growth of the state. So far as the com- plete organization and equipment of the necessary de- partments of the University are concerned, the expec- INAUGURAL ADDRESS 115 tation is wholly reasonable, and has not been disap- I)ointed. I believe, also, that the time has now come when, in respect to the number of students who will enjoy the privileges of the University, the institution will show that it is keeping pace with the progress of the state. So far as I can now see, a state university differs from other colleges and universities in very few par- ticulars. Its objects and its methods are essentially the same as theirs. Only in the fact that it is the child of the state, and bound in law to honor its parent by obeying and serving the state, does it present any fea- ture specially different from other institutions. This may or may not be an important feature. If the state wants the same kind of education which is acceptable to the best part of the civilized world, the fact that the state controls the university is of no consequence. But if the state wants an education entirely different from that required by the rest of the civilized world, then the state's control of the university is of the greatest moment, for the state has a perfect right to receive the kind of education which it desires. The state which created the university reserves to itself the right of directing and controlling it. The state, through its legally appointed agents, may say what shall and what shall not be taught; how far the higher education shall be pursued; how far original investigation shall be made pos- sible; how ample or how insignificant shall be the library, the museum, the apparatus; who and what kind of men shall be the instructors. In short, the state may absolutely determine both the direction and the extent of the university's growth. A jwwer so complete must be exercised by the state with very 116 INAUGURAL ADDRESS great discretion, if it would see in its university any evidence of that growth which is the result of real vitality within. There must be stability in the uni- versity, a settling to honest work by the combined forces of the institution, undistracted by perpetual apprehension of change and revolution. The seed sown in the morning must not be dug up at night to see whether it has sprouted. Nor must the impatient husbandmen assemble with their harvesters to gather in the crop before the proper time for the harvest has come. The order and the limitations of nature can not be disregarded even by a sovereign state. It is ^^first the blade, then the ear, after that the full corn in the ear." On the other hand, the university, in loyalty to the state which created and supi)orts it, must be so ad- ministered as to meet the wants of all and to violate the rights of none. It can not, therefore, be conduct- ed on any narrow theory of education. Its studies must begin at a i)oint which the intelligent and in- dustrious scholars of the high school can reach, and they must be selected without prejudice or bias. Its instruction must be given with absolute fidelity to truth for truth's sake. Its range of studies must be as wide as the highest interests of the people require. And its aim must be to promote real scholarship and true learning, to cultivate intellects that shall be- come a i)ower in the state, and shall augment the forces by which civilization is advanced and the hu- man race is made better, and at the same time by original investigations to make additions to the world's knowledge. I o£Fer these suggestions, not because I think they are especially needed here, but because they express INAUGURAL ADDRESS 117 in a general way my feelings with reference to the manner in which the state should exercise its power of control ; and I am the more happy to express these views becanse, after a year's exi>erience, I find that it is the manner in which the state does exercise its power of control. A university is not bom in a day, either by private or public liberality. Time is needed for the assem- bling of all the elements, personal and material, that shall constitute the forming power of a university; and not less time, certainly, to inspire that confidence in the public mind in respect to the new institution which shall turn into its halls, and away from older institutions, the currents of popular support. With entire confidence in the wisdom and ability of those who laid the foundation of this institution and have had the administration of its a£Fairs, I shall not per- mit myself to doubt for one moment that with the generous supi)ort of the state, the wise oversight of the Board of Regents, and the cordial and earnest co-operation of an able faculty of instructors, this University can be made so good as to command the confidence of the public and to receive the support of the public. Many of the questions relating to the higher edu- cation, which have been vigorously discussed in Eu- rope and America for some years, do not need to be discussed here and now. Some of these questions have been practically settled, some of them are of little importance, and most of the others are rapidly finding their proper answer through exi>erience and trial. Yet the very radical changes which have but recently been introduced into some of our oldest uni- versities, prove most clearly that no perfectly sat- 118 INAUGURAL ADDRESS isfactory system of education has yet been devised. With the multiplication of sciences and the enlarge- ment of histories and literatures, there must inevi- tably arise a tendency to cut ofif those branches of study which can furnish no better reason for occupy- ing the place they do occupy than that they impart discipline of mind — a tendency, in other words, to seek discipline as far as possible in studies which not only make the mind capable of work, but also furnish the mind with material for work. And yet, I can not but think that this tendency, so far as it shall lead to a total surrender of those studies which experience has adjudged to be most salutary for pur- poses of discipline, ought to be resisted rather than encouraged. There is no principle in education more important than this, that attainments in even the most practical departments of knowledge must be based upon a broad, general culture. It is with edu- cation as with building. No matter what may be the style of architecture, the superstructure must stand upon a solid foundation or it is worthless. And in the laying of foundations there has always been but one principle to govern, and that is that the foundation shall be solid, capable of supporting the superstruc- ture. The foundation is not as ornamental as the rest of the structure, but it is not on that account the less important. The foundation is not what the architect spends his highest powers upon, but it is not on that account the less important. Your (Jothic arches, your C!orinthian or Doric columns will all tumble to the dust without the faithful, conscien- tious work of the mason as he lays the strong foun- dation upon which all is to stand. No combination of different kinds of architecture can be made which INAUGURAL ADDRESS 119 will render the solid foundation unnecessary. And, in my judgment, no arrangement of studies for the purpose of education can be made which will not re- quire the grand discipline of mathematics and lan- guages as a foundation. These studies are not merely disciplinary; they are literally the foundation ui)on which other studies rest. Upon our knowledge of mathematics depends our power to master the whole realm, not merely of physical, but even of econom- ical, science; and upon our knowledge of languages depends out accuracy in the use of our own tongue as well as our mastery of the past, as revealed in literature, language, and history. Those persons, therefore, who tell us that there is so much to learn that we must hurry, and must begin with the prac- tically useful, meaning thereby that we must omit the time-honored training of mathematics and lan- guages, either do not know what they are talking about, or they exhibit something worse than midsum- mer madness. The problem in education is, ^^How shall the young be best fitted to perform the highest work for their own age and the ages that are to come." It is, in form, the same problem which has exercised the in- genuity, the learning, the philanthropy, and the piety of all past time. But the answer to the problem can not always be the same, for there are elements in the problem which are constantly changing. The human mind, indeed, remains substantially the same. The child bom in the nineteenth century is as help- less and ignorant as the child born in the sixteenth century. Thanks to the laws of heredity, and to the increased cultivation of a long line of ancestors, there are, doubtless, in his mental faculties greater possi- 120 INAUGURAL ADDRESS bilities of development than there were in the infant of the sixteenth century. But, practically, in both we start with a blank and write upon the tablets of the mind whatever we can write and the tablets can receive. But the other elements of the problem are not invariable. The amount and kind of knowl- edge imparted in an educational course must vary with the range and value of knowledge possessed by the human race. The worid's progress must be recognized by the universities; and, as they can not impart all knowl- edge, they must impart the most important knowledge. No one supposes that the most important knowledge to-day is what would have been called so three centu- ries ago. Again, with the growth of knowledge the ages change amazingly in the character and scope of their pursuits, so that the learning which would have fully equipped a man for useful service to his age three centuries ago, would to-day leave him helpless and isolated from the activities and thought of the age. It is plain, then, that the so-called completed edu- cation of the nineteenth century must be very dif- ferent from the completed education of the sixteenth century. The new branches of knowledge by which man has been made more clearly the master of na- ture, by which human comfort and human happiness have been so greatly increased, and by which every department of human industry will be more and more affected, as new inventions or discoveries shall add to or destroy the value of invested capital, these must not be omitted from a curriculum which pur- ports to fit a student for the activities, the struggles, the conflicts of this terribly competitive age. It is these studies which depend for their importance upon INAUGURAL ADDRESS 121 those elements of the problem which are variable, namely, the absolute range of human knowledge and the requirements of the age; and it is these studies, therefore, which must be changed from time to time, as the state of knowledge and the requirements of the age shall demand. But there are other things to be secured by education which do not depend upou these changing elements of knowledge and ages. These are clear thinking, logical reasoning, the pow- er to observe and to infer, to discover truth and to enforce it. These things are needed in every age and in every condition of human knowledge. They belong to that element of the problem which is un- changing— the human mind itself. The laws of the human mind remain unchanged from age to age, unaffected by all the inventions and discoveries which revolutionize human industries. The method of cul- ture for the human mind may, therefore, properly remain the same from age to age, if any method has been discovered which confessedly is effective. Such a method has been discovered. It is through the discipline of the mathematics and the languages. The utility of this method has been demonstrated by experience. Its utility can not grow less so long as the human intellect remains what it is. This dis- ciplinary process, therefore, as effectively fitting the mind to deal with the higher problems of practical knowledge is not to be given up at the call of panic- stricken theorists, who, catching a glimpse of the immensity of God's universe, are in such a hurry to master all its secrets that they want to begin to calculate eclipses before they have studied arithmetic. But every one can see that the sooner the dis- ciplinary studies of education are completed, the bet- 122 INAUGURAL ADDRESS ter; provided their work has been well done. It is a poor plan to build without any foundation, but it is equally bad to be always laying foundation and never building. Against both of these errors the university ought to guard by insisting upon the laying of the proper foundations in the preparatory schools, and in the earlier years of the university course, and by insisting upon the building of some part of a symmetrical and useful superstructure in the later years of tie university course. The only way to secure such a desirable condition of things is not merely to establish reasonable re- quirements for admission to the university, but to insist upon those requirements in all cases. The ex- cellence of a college is not measured by the number of its students. It is easy to secure large numbers of students if little preparation is required, and that little is dispensed with when not found. Better have a few students who are real scholars, than a thousand who ought to be in the common schools. The most hopeful sign for the university to-day is that the standard of scholarship in our high schools is steadily rising. As the perfection of the state's educational system increases, the requirements for admission to the university should be gradually raised, so that a higher grade of scholarship may be secured. To this process there is, of course, a necessary limit. The youth of fifteen years can not be expected to know very much more to-day than the youth of the same age ten years ago might have known; for both start from the same point of absolute ignorance, with the same mental powers, and have the same time for development. Whatever superiority the youth of to- day may evince will be largely due to improved meth- INAUGURAL ADDRESS 123 ods of instruction. There can be no doubt that the methods of instruction at the present time are in most respects superior to the methods of former times. They certainly produce men with far more knowledge, and I think I may safely say that they produce scholars with much greater culture than did the methods of former times. But I very much doubt that they produce more vigorous thinkers than did the former methods — ^better scholars but not mightier men. And the reason of this is evident. The amount required to be learned has been vastly in- creased; but the paths of learning have been made smooth and level. Every possible facility for the acquisition of knowledge is given to the student, every possible ray of light is concentrated upon the page he is to learn. As a consequence, rapid progress is possible and comparatively easy. Almost all that is needed on the part of the student is industry and a good memory. His mind is a reservoir into which every one of his instructors pours as much of knowl- edge as he possibly can. But the human mind has other faculties than memory, and for the proper de- velopment of the mind these other faculties ought to be exercised. Abraham Lincoln was a man, as he de- scribed himself, of "imperfect education." What did he know of the simple beauties of Homer, or of the philosophy of Socrates, or of the divine energy of De- mosthenes, or of the polished eloquence of Cicero, or of the Epicurean elegance of Horace? Yet where was the man in the United States who could have con- structed better the argument in his Cooper Institute speech, or could have created that marvel of simple but sublime eloquence, his speech at Gettysburg? He did not know many things, but he knew some things, 124 INAUGURAL ADDRESS and upon them be had thought^ bringing into exer- cise all the faculties of his mind, and thereby develop- ing— not what we call scholarship, but something which is far above scholarship — the broadest, highest, most perfect manhood of the intellect. He studied Euclid until he knew what "demonstrate" meant. When he knew what "demonstrate" meant, he knew how to demonstrate, not merely propositions in Eu- clid, but propositions affecting the national prosperity and life. It was not with him a mere matter of memory. It was not the docile following in the stei>s of a teacher. It was profound thinking upon what he studied; a complete assimilation to his own intel- lect of the processes of reasoning ; an absolute appro- priation of the certain courses of mathematics to the purposes of his own mind in every department of life. And so he became something more than the legal humorist of a country town; something more than a politician and a political orator; something more than a member of Congress; something more than a president. Amid the desolation of a great civil war, beneath the cloud of doubt and uncertainty which hung over the destinies of the nation, tortured by the envenomed shafts of his enemies, and crucified by the distrust of his friends, wrapping himself in a mantle of seemingly cheerful levity, he thought pro- foundly upon the awful problems which concerned the destinies of his country, and he solved them, dem- onstrating to the country the correctness of his so- lution ; and thus he became at last the embodied con- science, patriotism, thought, and force of the nation ; and the tears that fell in every loyal household of the country, when he died, attest the moral and intellec- tual greatness of this man of "imperfect education." INAUGURAL ADDRESS 125 The lesson of all this is not far to seek. It is that real education, perfect or imperfect, is something more than the mere acquisition of knowledge. It is the appropriation of knowledge in such a way as to produce power. Eeal education is self-education* It is the result of work done by the student and not for him. The mind is not a reservoir. It is a living organism, and what we put into it must be its nour- ishment and make it grow. And it is just here, if anywhere, that our modern qrstem of education is in danger of breaking down. We are in great danger of substituting ^'cramming" for training, and of mak- ing human minds "reservoirs, something merely re- ceptive, instead of living springs capable, under prop- er management, of throwing out larger and better streams." I am not indifferent to the acquisitions of students, but I am far more concerned for their growth. I am not indifferent as to what students shall study, but I am more concerned as to how they shall study. If natural science, for example, is so studied as to make the student master of nothing but the results of previous investigators' observation and induction, without developing in the student both the power and the habit of observation and induction, it seems to me that it is not studied in the right way. If the classical languages are so studied that no men- tal discipline is derived from the careful observation of the laws of the language, and no culture is gained as the poetry and eloquence and philosophy of Greek and Roman thinkers are converted into lifeless, and, it may be, hideous English, it seems to me that the classics are not studied in the right way. And if history is studied in such a manner that the student gains from it nothing more than the ability to answer 126 INAUGURAL ADDRESS an unlimited number of questionB as to the dates of battles and the sequence of rulers, it seems to me that history is not studied in the right way. I have thus dwelt upon the disciplinary part of education because, important as it is, it is yet likely in this age of hurry to be overlooked, and because, when it has been properly attended to, other things will almost take care of themselves. The scholar is to be develoi)ed before the specialist, and the man before the statesman. In the higher work of the uni- versity it is eminently proper that there should be a reasonable degree of choice given to the student as to what branches he shall study. When the intellect has been properly trained by the early disciplinary studies, it is no degradation either of the student or of scholarship to suffer the learner to pursue those studies for which he has some aptitude as well as some positive taste. It is the veriest humbug in education that a man must always study what he dislikes, and must always try to do what it is a priori probable that he can never do well. It is like trying to make painters of the color-blind and orators of the deaf and dumb. Why may we not heartily try to develop and make the most of those faculties Ood has given us, instead of trying to supplement God's work by devel- oping faculties He never gave us? If, therefore, a man has a taste for the study of nature, and an apti- tude for the scientific method of investigation, by all means let him devote himself to nature and the study of her laws. He will do better work and be in all respects a better man by following the natural bent of his mind, than if he were shut up -to the study of Greek tragedy, for which he has no natural taste. So, too, the man of poetic feeling, of imagination, with INAUGURAL ADDRESS 127 a taste for literature and a faculty for acquiring Ian- guageSy and who hopes some day himself to be a lit- erary artist, why, after years of mental discipline in preparatory schools, should he be required to keep on to the end of his university course in mathematical and scientific studies with the student who expects to be a civil engineer or an analytical chemist? Is it ^^degrading" to exercise common sense in education, and adapt means to ends? Is it ^^degrading" to suffer a man to learn what he expects to spend his life in do- ing? Or does higher education consist in making a man try to do what he can never do well, and what, of choice, he would never do at all? The ultimate object to be secured by education, so far as intellec- tual training is concerned, is power. But this power is not to be gained by devotion to any single depart- ment in a university course. No student in a uni- versity, unless he is in the professional and technical schools, ought to be an embryo minister, doctor, or lawyer, or an embryo politician, chemist, or teacher, looking only to what will pay in his life-work. The future statesman will not be injured by knowing some- thing of intellectual philosophy and ethics, as well as political economy and history ; and the future cler- gyman may well study the economic sciences and his- tory of this world before he devotes himself exclu- sively to the contemplation of the next world. The university ought, doubtless, to throw some light upon the future path of its scholars ; but it ought, also, to keep the culture of its scholars as broad as possible to the very last moment of their student life. Before they enter upon their professional studies, the uni- versity ought to have corrected forever their intellec- tual near-sightedness, and ought to have created in 128 INAUGURAL ADDRESS their minds a conviction that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in their tech- nical or professional philosophy. It ought to have taught them that the highest attainments of the in- tellect are little more than the perception of harmony in the laws of matter and of spirit — a harmony that was as perfect before man discovered it as it is now^ but with the creation of which he had nothing to do. It ought to have taught them that the same truth holds good with reference to all their so-called arts and sciences ; that language existed before grammar ;: that poetry and oratory flourished before rhetoric; that elements combined according to invariable laws before chemistry was known; that feeling, thought^ and will existed before mental philosophy; that na- tions, governments, and statesmen flourished before political economy became a science; and that God made and ruled the universe before there was what men call "systematic theology." The scholar, rejoic- ing in the discoveries that the human mind has made,, may yet well be humble when he reflects that they are all nothing more than the finding out of the laws according to which the Master mind has ordained that the universe shall move; and that the sum of human acquisition is less than the veriest primer of science as known to the great Architect of all. A very common demand at the present time is that education shall be "practical" — a very just de- mand, indeed, if by "practical" is meant "useful," but a very degrading demand, indeed, if "practical" means merely "money-making." This is unquestionably a practical age. Ours is a comparatively new country. It is natural that material interests should be promi- nent in the minds of the people. Great possibilities INAUGURAL ADDRESS 12» of accumulating wealth exist, and wealth brings with it far more than formerly. The fairly educated man to-day finds wealth an effective means of adding to his pleasures, giving him joys that are purely intel- lectual. He can read with delight the best authors. He can fill his house with the most charming works; of art. But, after all, it is education which makes, it possible for a man to enjoy the things in literature and art which wealth can procure. Wealth is a great, convenience and comfort; education is a necessity. If either must be sacrificed, let us not so degrade our human nature as to think for a moment that educa- tion, the development of the human mind, its tastes, its perception, its powers, ought io be sacrificed to- wealth, the power to buy horses, and wines, and houses, and delicacies for the delight of the body. Heaven save us from sucli a materialism as that. Yet,, it can not be denied that the tendency io seek wealth with an utter absorption of interest, as if wealth for its own sake were the one thing needful, is altogether too common. It shows itself not merely in the restless^ exciting, reposeless life of our people; but, what is much more sad, it shows itself in the rapidly dimin- ishing classes as you go higher and higher in our schools. It shows itself in the smaller classes in the- closing years of our university course. "Get just enough education to enable you to make money, and then make money." That is the theory of life of toa many. This is an unhealthy state of things. We are not living in such a primitive age that any such de- votion to material interests is necessary. There are no forests that must he felled, no fields that must he- broken up and sowed with wheat, no railroads that must he built, no new towns that must he founded,. 130 INAUGURAL ADDRESS and all at onc^ so that our boys must come out of school half educated in order to help. This country is prosperous enough, Minnesota is rich enough to give an education to her sons and daughters; and, if, tlirough overvaluing wealth or undervaluing learning, this education is not gained by the youth of our com- monwealth, a most terrible mistake is made. The life is more than meat ; the man is more than his environ- ment But the people of this country are too wise to fol- low any business a great while unless it pays. There is no reason why they should follow education more than anything else unless it pays. It is, then, plainly the business of the university to furnish an education that will pay for the time and labor expended in get- ting it. It is also the business of the university to cul- tivate such a taste as will prevent the profitableness of education from being judged by a money standard — a taste that will recognize the fact that Agassiz, famous for his scientific attainments and a benefactor of mankind by reason of his scientific discoveries, was nobler when he said that he had no time for making money, than he would have been had he used his knowledge successfully for acquiring untold wealth. How, then, can the university prove its real value to the state? It must not only be able to give instruction in all true learning, but it must be some- thing more than a school for teaching. It must be in the highest sense a seat of learning, not merely of learning as represented in libraries and museums, though it should be rich in these, but of learning as represented in the scholarship of its various faculties. Its value is not to be measured by the number of its students or graduates. No arithmetical calculations INAUGURAL ADDRESS 131 which shall seemingly show the cost of educating each student can tell the profit or loss to the state. For, in the first place, the education of the students in the uniyergity will be but a part, and not necessarily the largest part, of the good which the university will do. Its infiuence ought to be felt not here alone in the academic buildings, but in every school in the whole state. It is not the common school which pushes up the university; it is the university which lifts up the common school. It does this by setting up a higher standard of excellence in scholarship; by opening wider and more interesting fields of study ; by creating a better and more positive taste for learn- ing; by holding out inducements to every scholar to pursue his studies longer, and avail himself of all the advantages of education furnished by the state; and by stimulating scholars and teachers alike to do good and faithful work, by the prospect of reward in admission to the higher work of the university. Again, one mind thoroughly trained may be of more sen'ice to the state than ten thousand untrained. A Morse and a Whitney compensate for all that it costs to train a whole generation. No one can fore- cast the future of any scholar. We must train as many as we can, hoping good things of all, and ex- pecting great things of some. Ralph Waldo Emerson once said of a class of one hundred and fifty young men, in an eaatern college, that there must be among them three or four that it was worth while to try to make something of. I think it is worth while to try to make something of the whole one hundred and fif- ty. Perhaps only three or four can be "something*' as Emerson would estimate "something"; but the highest success in life is often the result of such a 132 INAUGURAL ADDRESS spel of Jesus Christ. Cherish- ing this belief as in some measure the inspiration of life, I must be permitted to act in all my relations, public and private, as befits a man who does cherish such a belief; and I know that far greater evil will INAUGURAL ADDRESS 135 come to those entrusted to my care should I be faith- less to my belief, than will ever come from the strict- est fidelity thereto. The success of the university in its work will de- pend very largely upon the harmony and concert of action of its instructors. The university is a kind of family. It ought to be bound together like a family by oneness of interest. The law which governs its inner life, like that which governs the inner life of the family, should be the law of love. There must be authority in both. Weakness is not love. Law is not cruelty. But it is not by an arbitrary exercise of power that a good father secures the obedience of his children. It is not by selfishness, isolation, or indif- ference to the common good that brothers and sisters make their home-life delightful. A common regard for the good of the family, and a common love of each member of the family for all the others, are the only forces by which a happy and prosperous home-life can be secured. So in a university, there must be on the part of each instructor a desire to promote the highest interests of the institution, and a readi- ness to co-operate with the rest of the instructors in every effort to promote the general good. The course of study in this university seems to me to be characterized by a wise conservatism, which is reverent tow^ards all that is good in the education of former times, and by a wide-awake spirit of prog- ress, which appreciates the learning of the present. For example, I am very glad that provision is made for teaching both Greek and Latin; and I sincerely hope that an increasing number of students will from year to year manifest a desire to take a complete clas- sical course. On the other hand, it is no less pleasant —10 136 INAUGURAL ADDRESS to observe that the study of modern languages is here made specially prominent, and that more than ordi- nary facilities are afforded for acquiring a knowledge of the Romance, German, Scandinavian, and English languages and literatures. When one reads the clear and vigorous English of such a scientist as Professor Huxley, he appreciates the fact that culture in lan- guage is not incompatible with the highest scientific attainments, and is of the greatest value as a prepa- ration for communicating scientific truth. A scientific course ought to embrace a generous culture in lan- guage; and when it does, the liberal development of this department becomes of the highest importance to the state. The same principle applies to the College of Mechanic Arts, a department which, if properly developed, can hardly fail to be attractive to many students, and to be of very high practical value. I speak of these points merely by way of illustration, and not as an attempt to discuss the curriculum of the university. If the work done here is as good as the possibilities are great, there is no reason why a student should not here gain an education that will qualify him for the practical work of life, or for the prosecution of his studies and investigations in higher regions of thought. There is much that is inspiring about an old university, with its traditions, its broad student life, its many departments, its world-wide influence, and its nourishment drawn from all quarters of the globe. If great age were necessary to success, we might well be discouraged. But the oldest univer- sities were once young, and some of the youngest universities are among the best. We have started with the benefit of all past experience. Let us have INAUGURAL ADDRESS 137 here the best kind of teaching and we shall not fail to have the best kind of scholars. Students will come to ns in generous numbers, if we can do for them what they need. And I think I can not be mistaken in the belief that as our courses of study in the later years shall grow richer in subjects of living interest, and shall prove their real value in superadding the most important knowledge to the discipline of the earlier years, a constantly increas- ing number of students will be more reluctant than heretofore to leave the university without complet- ing its entire course of study. The generosity which provides a university for higher education ought to be appreciated by parents throughout this state. No better inheritance can be given to a child than a good education. With this, unnumbered sources of enjoyment are opened, and the possibilities of a useful life are increased. It is possible that the educated man may sometimes be outstripped in life by the so-called uneducated. It is quite possible that, with widened views of the ever-expanding fields of knowledge, and from person- al experience of other minds brighter than his own, there may come to the student a distrust of his own attainments and i>owers, which may cause him to shrink from the rough conflicts of active or profes- sional life. It is quite possible that refinement may be gained at the expense of vigor. Certainly there is nothing so well-fitted to destroy a man's self-con- ceit as thorough education, and doubtless self-con- ceit in some men is mightier than cultivated intel- lect in others. But such results as I have hinted at are not naturally to be expected from education. It is simply reason to believe that a man will sue- 138 INAUGURAL ADDRESS ceed best with a cultivated and well-informed mind. The history of our country proves this. But when one with such a mind fails, as sometimes happens, he is not even then without his compensations. For in his own thoughts and studies in the world in which he has lived apart from the great turbulent world of matter in which he has made a failure of it, does he not find a delight which goes far towards reconciling him to the loss of other things? We ask, then, the people of this state to sustain this University by giving to it their sons and daugh- ters to be educated. We ask the boys and girls of Minnesota to remember that this University exists for them and belongs to them. If they will come to us, we will do all that we can to give them dis- cipline, culture, knowledge, power — all that we can to ennoble their characters and to confirm their de- votion to the highest truth. It is a delightful experience for a teacher to quicken the intellect of a scholar. It is a no less delightful experience for a teacher to quicken the moral faculties of a student, and make him strong to resist temptations to evil. To win the confidence and regard of his pupils, while yet holding them fast to courses of discipline and inspiring them to seek the highest things in knowledge, so that he may be to them not merely "guide or philosopher," but "friend," to whom in any emergency, in any mo- ment of special trial, they would come with a full assurance of sympathy and help, as they might to their own father in the distant home, this, it seems to me, must be the crowning joy of the wise educa- tor ; for he knows that so long as his pupils are bound to him by the ties of personal affection, his power INAUGURAL ADDRESS 139 both to stimulate them in intellectual work, and to restrain them from everything hurtful will be almost complete. I hope there will be develojMJd here, among the students, if it does not already exist, a feeling of love for the University — a love that shall last as long as life itself. I hope that all our students, as they graduate and go out into the world, will look back to this place as to what was once their home, and what, in a very high sense, was their birth-place; that they will have pleasant memories of something besides recitations and lectures; that they will re- call many a word of counsel, of encouragement, of inspiration, given to them by the instructors out- side the lines of daily routine ; and that, as the years pass on, they will love to come back to us and en- courage us in our work, by showing what noble men and women they have become. That is the kind of loyalty to the University we shall seek to inspire, a loyalty bom of the remembrance that here, in the very crisis of life, kindness and sympathy were experienced, here intellectual power and moral earn- estness were acquired, and here an inspiration to a true life was given, an inspiration whose voice has been heard in all the years that are past, and, they know, will never be silent in the years that are to come. THE DISSEMINATION OF EDUCATED MEN * The orthodox idea of a college education has always emphasized the importance of discipline and has deprecated any haste towards specializing. It maintains, as was universally maintained fifty years ago, that the ideal education is not an agency for teaching a man particular facts that are going to be of service to him. The higher institutions of learning should undertake to teach theory rather than prac- tice, methods of reasoning rather than methods of doing things. The college stands for the non-com- mercial interests, the traditional public sentiment; and the university is something more than a place for training professional experts; it is a place for training citizens for a life of freedom and leadership. These sentiments are, no doubt, the governing sen- timents in most of the New England collies of to-day, as they have been in the past It is i>ossible that they still meet the conditions of these college con- stituencies as fully as they did a century ago, though I very much doubt it. But the longer I study the problem of student life and the economic conditions of our country, the more I am led to suspect that there is a fallacy somewhere in the old argument; the more I am 'convinced that a college education *A]i address delivered at the Twenty-eighth Annual Commencement of the University of Minnesota, Jane 7th» 1900. 142 THE DISSEMINATION ought to fit a man for something; and I am by no means certain that it is not a better education to become master of one great subject, like biology for example, than it is to learn a little about a number of subjects. And so I am not as afraid of specializ- ing as I once was, though I have in no degree lost my regard for discipline and culture. I do not, however, believe that discipline is sacrificed when thorough work is made of any one great subject, half as much even as it is when the course of study is the hop, skip, and jump of the curriculum of some of our colleges. Certainly if a man knows what he intends to do and, as he goes through college, can get knowledge and discipline out of the study of subjects that will be helpful to him, there can be no objection to his doing so. Nor is there any merit so far as I can see in hunting for discipline in subjects that are intel- lectually and practically without interest to you. But it is not my purpose to speak particularly of the course of study in colleges or to discuss the old question of knowledge vs. discipline, though the subject has a bearing upon what I wish to say. We hear a great deal about the importance of the dis- semination of learning. I propose to speak upon the dissemination of learned men, or the distribution of educated men. By that I mean increasing the number of vocations in which graduates of colleges may honorably and usefully engage; the bringing of trained intellects into contact with life in larger areas; the opening of wider fields for the exercise of the trained powers of mind and heart, and the uplifting of untold thousands more of human- ity by the inspiring contact. I can not treat the OF EDUCATED MEN 143 subject exhaustively (unless I speak very long) but I shall have accomplished my purpose if I shall suc< ceed in inducing the young graduates to carefully reconsider their plans of life. In the natural course of things the child is sent to school as soon as he is old enough. He passes on from one grade to another till he is ready to enter the high school. No other course appearing desirable, he goes through the high school. If it is possible for either his parents or himself to meet fhe expense, he goes to college and in due time is graduated. Multitudes, of course, stop all along the road he has traveled ; but not an inconsiderable num- ber have kept step with him and at last hold the diploma of the college. What shall become of those who fell out by the way it is impossible to tell. It is quite useless even to speculate concerning their fate. They have doubtless found something to do suited to their attainments. Our inquiry is concern- ing the fate of these young graduates. What shall they do? What shall they be? Many of them have had during their years of training more or less defi- nite purpose as to their final occupation. Generally the selection of an occupation has been made for some reason other than a sense of special personal adaptation for the chosen work, or from a feeling that more persons are needed in that work. The occupation is usually selected because it is seen to be one that in the past has brought to some of its followers honor and money. The more honor and money there is in it the more desirable the occupation. This is reasonable enough. But if all graduates are to determine their future life by such considerations only, all graduates are going to enter at most but a 144 THE DISSEMINATION few of the possible occapations, and these occupations are going to be nndnly crowded. What is needed is the dissemination of men of education among a larger number of fields of labor, and the general lifting up of the character of the work done in these fields as a consequence. One of the most difficult questions which parents have to answer at the present time is what shall we do with our children, and especially with our boys? The methods of conducting business have so changed within a few years that it is much more difficult than formerly for young men to start in business for themselves. The opportunity of learning what was called a trade is much less frequent than formerly, and, indeed, a trade so called is much less important than formerly. The professions of law, medicine, and theology are all notoriously overcrowded. The law business, except in rare cases where large corpora- tions are concerned, has diminished, while lawyers have multiplied. Diseases are common enough, but they do not increase as fast as the doctors. And as for the ministers, while the old cry of the neces- sity of Christian education partly to supply the churches with ministers, is still heard, every one familiar with the subject knows that there are already far more clergymen than there are supporting churches, and that the old system of hiring men to study for the ministry is no longer necessary or desir- able. These professions are unduly crowded, not merely because by far too large a number of the graduates of colleges enter them, but because their ranks are further swelled by large numbers of persons who have had no collegiate training. Bome of these no OF EDUCATED MEN 145 donbt are excellent men in their profession but many are only hungry competitors for work. The law and medical schools and, to some extent, the theo- logical seminaries are all industriously engaged in graduating a multitude of these unscholarly men, and none but the ablest and most successful men in the professions whose position is already assured, can contemplate the situation with composure. The trades unions guard with jealous care against too large an influx of candidates for work into their ranks, and, as one looks over the whole field of labor, he finds only one class of men who still heartily welcome all newcomers to their ranks and are espe- cially glad to welcome any one who possesses more knowledge and skill than they do themselves. This class is the farmers. While all other claases of labor- en^ are protesting against educating too many men to compete with them, the complaint of the farmer, so far as he makes any, is against educating away from the farm rather than for the farm. And I think that the brightest fact in our economic condition as a country is the multitude of acres that are still inad- equately tilled, if tilled at all, and the generous atti- tude of the farmers towards all who are seeking an opportunity to earn a living. With a fixed quantity of arable land in the world, and a population ever increasing not only in numbers but in appetite and taste, it can hardly be supposed that production will ever for any length of time exceed the demand for the products of the soil, and, therefore, it may be hoped that the generous attitude of the farmers towards all the other sons of toil will never result in great misfortune to themselves. What shall we do with our boys? Of course it 146 THE DISSEMINATION is easy to answer the question as to some boys. The boy who has special talent for some one thing which he can do as few others can, will always be in demand. The boy who can make cartoons more striking and pleasing and instructive than any one else can, will have no trouble in finding work. Every newspaper that has enterprise and sense and capital enough to employ a cartoonist will want him. The boy who has humor and literary skill and the creative faculty will make a place for himself and will be sought after instead of having to seek. But how few these are even among the so-called educated men. For most men of even higher education the question that was asked about them years ago, what shall we do with our boySy is still unanswered. The question will be answered somewhere in the coming years. It may be wisely answered or foolishly answered. It may be thoughtfully answered by the boys themselves. It may be accidentally answered. But it certainly is not desirable that most men's lives should be di- rected by accidents or that they should plunge into life with no carefully considered scheme of what they propose to do. Here is where the boy who has pow- erful and influential friends has a great and lasting advantage over the boy who has none. A friend of his father's makes a place for him in his store with every possibility of rising in position and salary, of becoming a partner in the concern, and a partner of the senior partner's daughter for life. He is cared for. A great railroad' company that knows the value of capable and trustworthy men and, when it gets such, keeps them and makes the most of them, can be induced to give some of the boys a chance; but it generally requires influence to secure these places, OF EDUCATED MEN 147 and happy is the boy whose father is on good terms with the authorities who are to assign the places. Bo in one way or another, by reason of respectable connections or family influence, or personal friend- ships, or something besides absolute merit at the start, a good many find places and go to work at what proves to be a life-work. But a great army of waiting men remains who have not been so for- tunate, and a still larger army of boys soon to be men is coming on; and all over the land parents are asking the old question, what shall we do with our boys? I shall not attempt to answer that ques- tion to-day. I can not answer it in any large way so that individuals would know any better what to do with their boys than they do now. But I shall lay down a few principles which, if acted on generally, ought to be helpful in answering this question. First: Do not try to put your boy into work for w^hich he is not fit. You naturally have a high opinion of your boy's ability and entertain high hopes of his future career. You may be entirely right in your judgment, and your boy may be as capable as you think he is. If so, you are to be congratulated. But in a multitude of cases parents are mistaken and are misled, in deciding what to do with their boys, by the ambitious desire to see them in some high place. What credit is it to be a clergyman, if one can not preach so that any one would wish to hear him? What credit to be a lawyer, if you are to be the laughing stock of the bar? What credit to be a doctor, if you can gain but few patients and soon bury those? What credit to be in high position of any kind and not be able to discharge the duties of the position as they ought to be discharged? The 148 THE DISSEMINATION world is full of men who only half live because they are in an uncongenial atmosphere and can hardly breathe, because they are laboring at work for which they have no natural or acquired adaptation. Don't spoil a good, jolly, honest, clean-souled farmer, such as your boy no doubt might be, for the sake of mak- ing him a tame and uninteresting clergyman or a nervous and unsuccessful lawyer, as it is quite pos- sible he would be if he were a clergyman or a lawyer at all. He may be a thoroughly sensible boy and he may be well-educated and yet have no adequate fitness for either the pulpit or the bar. The edu- cated man is most powerful when he is equal not only to all the duties of the position he fills, but, if need be, of something larger and better; while no one can be more unhappy than the educated man whose every power is taxed to the utmost to meet the duties of his position and who is in constant terror lest he shall fail to meet the requirements. There must be some reserve power in either a successful or a happy life. There is no reserve power, quite the contrary, when the place is too large for the man. Second : Do not seek for your boy a place where he will have an easy time, or where he can acquire a competence early and thus be able to rlstire from work early and spend most of his life in leisure. In a word, don't make it a point to help your boy to escape work. life without work is of no value. A man ought to try to make the world better for his living in it, and to that end he ought to produce more value than he consumes. But on the narrow ground of personal advantage it is much better to work and to keep on working as long as the mental and bodily powers will permit than to spend a large OF EDUCATED MEN 149 part of life in ease and idleness. No real force of character is developed by idleness. If you want your boy to be a real man, put him where he can do real work and where he will always have plenty of it to do. He will grow stronger under the discipline and will gain from his own experience in the con- flict a larger view of the world's needs and a higher inspiration to do his part in supplying these needs. His life will tell for something good, and that is the only life that is worth living. Give your boy by all means a chance to lead such a life. Third : See that the preparation of your boy for what you set him to do is perfect. This is no age for boys who can do one thing as well as another but nothing very well. Whoever is an expert in anything is sure of employment as long as the world needs that thing at all. If the boy is to be a doctor, give him the hospital for training after the medical school, if possible. If he is to be in a profession requiring public speaking, train him till he can speak so that men will love to hear him, so that he will rest and not weary his hearers as they listen to him. Nine- tenths of public speaking is ineffective because of lack of proper training. Bo with the hand. It can be trained to marvelous correctness in drawing; to wonderful skill in creating. There are multitudes of w*orkmen who can do ordinary work; but there are also workmen who, in the greatness of their skill and achievements, tower above all their fellows as do Demosthenes and Webster above ordinary sipeakers. It is better to make sure of final success by taking full time and pains to prepare, than to swell the num- ber of the unsuccessful by attempting to do what you are not in the fullest degree prepared for. 150 THE DISSEMINATION Finally: Don't be unreasonably ambitious for your boy nor load him down with expectations which he knows he can never realize. Be content, if he can be no more, to have him a good, clean, manly fellow, who will do faithfully and well what he can; who will love you, and love his country, and love his God- Help him, encourage him, cheer him, love him, but don't crush him with your unreasonable ambition to have him great. There are not many really great men in the world. But it is quite possible to be happy and useful without being great. And certainly nothing could be more foolish for parents or children than to be miserable or make each other miserable by expecting the impossible. Following these general principles, we may safely give our children all the education we can. It is not possible for the so-called higher education to become too common, if to those who secure it the possible field for activity is to be enlarged there- by, and not made smaller. But if, with each access of knowledge and culture, wide fields are to be closed to the advancing student, so that at last only the learned professions are to be available as a field of labor, only leaders of the people are to be the outcome of this training, then manifestly it is quite possible for multitudes of people to get a higher education who never ought to get it. For not all men are fitted for leadership no matter what their education. Leadership is not in them. Large num- bers of those who in these days are passing through college are persons of no exalted ability. They are fitted by nature for the practical work of life. They would make good farmers, good mechanics, good men of affairs, even if they had not the higher edu- OF EDUCATED MEN 151 cation. With this higher education^ they ought to be even better farmers and mechanics and men of affairs, and in very many cases this is just what they should be and what they could really bless the world by being. They can lift up and make glorious the labor in the realm of industry and economics, where- as if, simply because they have pursued a certain formulated course of study in a college, they must be constrained to say good-bye to these supposedly humbler pursuits and enter with all the rest of the crowd of college graduates into the arena of the learned professions and of statesmanship, it were better that their education had not been carried so far, and that they had been trained only for the work which they were given a natural capacity to perform. In a word, if a boy has natural capacity that would make him a good and successful farmer — and that, let me tell you, is a capacity not to be despised—^ there is no objection to his getting as much culture as the lawyer or the minister, if he does not in con- sequence insist on being a lawyer or a minister. It is an undoubted fact that large numbers of college graduates now enter mercantile and other lines of business who, if they had graduated forty years ago, would have entered the so-called profes- sions. It was not uncommon then for sixty or seventy per cent, of a class to enter these professions. Now it is rare indeed that so large a part of a graduat- ing class does so. The logic of events is opening doors here and there into other occupations, and the graduates are wise enough to enter. New fields for the educated man who will consent to be useful with- out being either a lawyer, a doctor, or a clergyman, are multiplying. I may mention a few of these. 152 THE DISSEMINATION First: Teaching. To many impecunious gradu- ates of college the work of teaching has always fur- nished an assured hope of at least temporary em- ploymenty a means of bridging over the chasm which separates the man from his high destiny that is to be. But teaching has now become a profession and ought no longer to be regarded as a mere makeshift till permanent work is secured. It is by no means as easy as it was for the disciplined scholar who knows a little of many things and not a great deal of any- thing— ^having never specialized — to command a sat- isfactory position as teacher in a school of sufficient rank to deserve the services of a graduate of a col- lege. If a teacher of physics is wanted, it must be somebody who knows all about physics — logic and metaphysics will not do. The candidate for any position as teacher must know his one subject bet- ter than any other. And he must know not only the subject, but how to teach it. He must have spe- cial training for this. The value of special training for teaching is now thoroughly appreciated by teachers and school boards alike. It is no longer thought that experience and age are disqualifications for teaching. There is, therefore, a stability and permanence to the work once unknown, so that no really accomplished teacher need fear the loss of employment by reason of advanc- ing age alone, but may confidently rely upon hav- ing full work so long as the intellectual powers are unimpaired, and interest in the work of teaching is unabated. True, one must keep up with the spirit of the age, and learn the new methods, and be young in everything but years and judgment, in order to make sure of this. But that is easy enough. The OF EDUCATED MEN 153 vital fact is that not merely here and there a man or a woman as in the past can be a teacher all their life, but large numbers of men and women can be sure of lifelong employment as teachers if they will have it; and it would be the greatest possible bless- ing to our schools all over the country if large num- bers of the graduates of colleges would devote their lives to teaching, thus at once relieving the pressure for work in the professions, and taking the places in schools of those who are not fit for the work, and, as a consequence, improving the education given by the schools. There are, of course, teachers enough already; but there are not enough competent teach- ers. With the development of the system of pedagogy it is inevitable that a higher standard of knowledge as well as of skill shall be set up for teachers, and the business, instead of being temporary, must become as permanent a profession as any other; and I cer- tainly know of no other profession that offers better reward for faithful work, even if that reward be less in money than some others. Money is not every- thing, and it does not profit to gain the whole world and lose oneself any more now than it did nineteen centuries ago ; and where a man devotes his life to the pursuit of money alone, he generally does lose himself. Second: Business. A new order of business has come into the world, and it looks as if it had come to stay. It involves combinations, retrenchment of expenses in production, the systematic creation and preservation of markets, a view of the whole world at once in its relation to the business to be conducted. This business is full of possibilities of good and not less full of .possibilities of terrible evil. It can be a blessing or a curse according as it is managed in 154 THE DISSEMINATION a spirit of generosity or of greed. It can keep the wheels of business moving with uninterrupted regu- larity, so that labor shall have steady employment, and the consumer may satisfy his wants at a reason- able price, or it can wreck everything when it pleases, ruining both workmen and customers by its gambler- like irregularities and its ungodly rapacity. It has not yet become greater than the state, more powerful than the people ; and, if it is wise, it will never make it necessary for the people to put forth their full power against it. But so long as it continues with its gigantic operations, the men who can success- fully manage the vast affairs concerned should be men of systematic and special training, and surely among these not a few ought to be graduates of our colleges. If these men are not competent for such work, why not? And if they are competent, what better work could they do? "Canst thou draw out leviathan with a hook? Canst thou put a hook into his nose?" Probably not. But it will come as near to putting a hook into the nose of leviathan as is possible when these great trusts are managed by intelligent, educated, conscientious men. Here, then, is a place, a place of danger if you please, a place not easy to attain, but a place large enough for many men, with duties difficult enough to require high intelligence, and college men ought to fill it. Third: The mechanic arts. Nowhere is there a greater field for intelligence and wisdom than here. In no field are there questions to be solved more dif- ficult or more important. How to subserve the best interests of the workmen as a body and at the same time not destroy or impair individual liberty, is a question more easily asked than answered, and one OP EDUCATED MEN 155 that neither the trades unions nor the general pub- lic have yet been able to answer satisfactorily. It is possible for the machine to become as execrable in labor politics as in state or city politics, and a few thousands of sensible, educated men with a thorough knowledge of the principles of mechanics and an hon- est desire to do the most good in the world can prob- ably accomplish more by imitating the life of the Divine Master while he was the carpenter at Naza- reth than they could by imitating his later life in public ministry and teaching. They could devise wise measures for themselves and their fellow workmen and doubtless save all concerned from many evils into which they are now often plunged by the rash- ness or foolishness or ignorance or selfishness of leaders. I assume that education broadens a man's vision, quickens his intellect, and makes him more capable of logical thinking, by which remedies for evils may be discovered, the causes of evils be re- moved, and better conditions of things in all respects be brought about. And I think I may justly assume that young men of character and of real nobility of purpose, having an education in the essential prin- ciples of the mechanic arts, as well as the broader culture which makes the man before the mechanic, could find a grand field for noble leadership among the toilers of the shops without in the least reducing the chances of their less educated fellows for work. They could add much to the comfort and the efficiency of labor. The general condition of labor has been wonderfully elevated by inventions. There is not the slightest danger that human ingenuity will ever interfere with the demand for labor. Just to men- tion the word electricity is enough to show how new 156 THE DISSEMINATION ideas expand the world of labor. Men's wants are properly multiplied and enlarged by civilization. The man with the hoe is superior to the man without a hoe. Labor operating machinery of all kinds is higher and nobler than labor without machinery. Disciplined mind studying natural laws and produc- ing machinery capable of constructing fabrics of greater fineness or utility than could be made other- wise, is contributing powerfully to the happiness of both the consumer and the producer, lessening the toil of the latter and increasing the pleasure and comfort of the former. I shall be glad when the graduates of our colleges shall be so distributed through all the branches of honest industry as to leave not one of them untouched by the inspiring presence of knowledge and culture. Fourth : Railroads. Here is an immense advance in the kind and quality of work to be done. The simplicity and crudeness of the early railroads are disappearing. Not only in the equipment and man- agement of individual railroads has great progress been made, but combinations are constantly form- ing, systems increase in intricacy, travel and business are alike changed from one route to another, and the management of the mighty behemoths of the land requires a higher class of talent and labor of better character than was once supposed to answer the purpose. And this process will go on. Here ought to be a large field for men . who are educated, a field in which, for I am inquiring for no other, men can do royal service to the world. If the rail- roads of the country shall come to be managed in all departments by men of the highest character, knowledge, and ability, they will give to the public OF EDUCATED MEN 157 the strongest assurance of safety in travel and to the business world the best guarantee of faithful and effective service whenever needed. The higher edu- cation ought to reach and affect the great question of transportation on land or water, in all its rami- fications, involving rates, long and short hauls, local conditions and needs, securing by the faithful appli- cation of scientific principles that essential justice to all, which Interstate Commerce Commissions, and State Bailroad Commissions, and, in some states, a helpless people, dependent upon the mercy of the rail- road for life, are, not with entire success, groping for at the present time. Fifth: Journalism and literature offer an im- mense field for college graduates who will deliber- ately and carefully fit themselves for this work and resolutely adhere to it. The multiplication of news- papers in the last forty years has been almost beyond calculation. The newspaper, when properly con- ducted, is a power for good. No man can be too great for the position of editor. The editor addresses every day or every week, as the case may be, a lar- ger audience than any that listens to the most elo- quent speaker. His words do not perish with their utterance but are in permanent form, to be read and read again, if they are worth it. His influence, if he is a man of ability and of principle, will be more commanding than it would be if he were in any other occupation. No man has a chance to do so much for patriotism, good government, public and private virtue, and general progress as he. The position is large and commanding. It needs a man of ability, culture, knowledge, and high motives to fill it. There are thousands of places where gradu- 158 THE DISSEMINATION ates of colleges might be and ought to be in editorial chairs, doing some good in the world, instead of starv- ing to death in competition with overfilled profes- sions. Literature, too, in its higher sense ought to engage the attention and be the life-work of larger numbers of educated men. Not so safe and sure an occupa- tion, because demanding higher powers, and powers of a particular kind, and because poetry and fiction and history must all be very good to constitute a safe reliance for support, it is not to be entered into by the commonplace and sluggish mind. But the demand for a living literature of to-day is so impera- tive and it comes from so many millions of reading and thinking people, that I can not but believe that there is room here in this field of literature for many of our brightest college men, if they can have the patience and the nerve to wait till their best and noblest thoughts shall have ripened for the world. Sixth : Agriculture. The time has been when it was supposed that anybody could be a farmer. Bo he can, but not a successful farmer. Agriculture, like other occupations, is advancing in character. The successful farmer must understand soils, and fer- tilizers, and methods of culture, and rotation of crops, and breeds and types of cattle, fruits and grains and grasses, methods of dairying, and a multitude of other things for which only a special scientific edu- cation with reference to agriculture can thoroughly prepare. The successful farmer is not the gentle- man who looks on while others do the work, and who puts into his land a great deal more money than he ever takes out. He is the man who practices farm- OF EDUCATED MEN 159 ing as a profession, just as the lawyer practices law ; who makes his Uving and accumulates property by means of his farm; who makes experiments not at random and foolishly but rationally under the guid- ance of scientific knowledge; who not only makes a success of his own business, reaping good harvests from all that he sows, but who is a light and an inspiration to his agricultural brethren, wise in coun- sel, intelligent in instruction, and enthusiastic in plan- ning and leading. He is independent, self-reliant, hon- est, guileless, and helpful, because he is under no constraint to be otherwise, and his life with nature makes him so. The problems he has to solve and the experiments to make are certainly as interesting and important as those wliich belong to any other profession, and in no other profession is an exact knowledge of the laws of plant and animal life more serviceable. Thinking has already transformed a multitude of farmers and made them in their sci- entific study of their work fairly entitled to be called professional; and education, specialized as clearly and definitely for agriculture as are the studies for other professions, must do the rest. I see before me in the coming years a mighty change all over the hills and the prairies of our land, when education and enterprise shall on every farm take the place of ig- norance and stolid routine, just as with every ad- vancing wave of prosperity and knowledge, the com- fortable, cheerful home takes the place of the cabin or the hut, and the all-sheltering barns take the place of stacks, stables, hovels, and rookeries. A free peo- ple, living on their own land, with abundance burst- ing from the earth every year, with science and litera- ture and culture at their command for themselves 160 THE DISSEMINATION and for their children — was ever a life pictured by poet that was sweeter than this? And why should not very many of our graduates enjoy this life and bless their fellow workers with all the knowledge and the cultiire that the universities have given them? Why should we think of an educated man who leads a life of noble independence and usefulness on a farm amid the delightful and health-giving works of nature as throwing away or wasting his life, and think of the lawyer shut up in the city office and wearing out his soul waiting for a client as making the most of himself? No wonder with such false notions of life prevalent everywhere that there is no proper distribution of educated men, but a great dearth of them where they are most needed, and con- gestion everywhere else. And let me say one thing more. Heretofore in our career as a nation our senators and representa- tives have been more frequently lawyers than mem- bers of any other profession. There have been good reasons for this. But the day is coming when the necessity for choosing lawyers so generally will pass away. The elevation of the farmers in character, intellect, and power will make it possible to find among them the noblest kind of men for public life,, men whose personal integrity, genuine interest in their constituents, and fidelity to everything which will promote the welfare of the people, will make them at once the safest and the most influential of representatives; and they will be what they are, not because they are farmers, but because in spite of being farmers they are the peers of the lawyer in mental power and training, while having at the same time a larger vision of what the country needs. Many OF EDUCATED MEN 161 a young man goes into law mainly as a stepping stone to politics and public life. But more and more as education advances and educated men are distributed, the best trodden paths that lead to the Capital will be found to come from the country and the farms. It is well for the young men who take the pro- fession of law mainly as a means of political advance- ment to remember that, while a large percentage of senators and congressmen are lawyers, only a very small percentage of lawyers are senators and con- gressmen, and of these nine-tenths become so in con- sequence of popular personal qualities and great read- iness of speech rather than on account of their attain- ments in law. A quarter of a century ago, I knew a little fellow in Yale College, the son of a widow in straitened circumstances, a bright enough boy, but one whom I should never have selected as likely to prove suc- cessful as a lawyer. He, however, studied law, and in time became an authority in certain subjects affect- ing large interests as well as the public welfare. A few weeks ago the newspapers announced the fact^I have every reason to believe it a fact — that he had recently received in a single fee a quarter of a million of dol- lars. I have no doubt that the services rendered were worth that amount to his clients, and everybody, who knows who his clients were, knows that they could pay such a fee without suffering. But where one man gets a chance to render such service and pocket such a fee, there are tens of thousands in the profession anxiously seeking for the merest atoms of business to provide themselves with the ordinary comforts of life. And yet from every quarter and every race and every grade of intellectual life, with college training 162 THE DISSEMINATION and without college training^ candidates for the law are multiplying with the expectation api>arently that, if they can once be admitted to the bar, they will be greater and higher and happier than they ever could be if they should follow less ambitious pursuits. I would discourage no man's reasonable ambition. Jjeast of all would I discourage the really talented child of poverty and toil from seeking an occupation in which his talents may find room for the most effect- ive activity. I remember too well the long line of great men headed by Daniel Webster who have come from the country home to adorn the highest courts of the nation. But comparatively few of those who make the attempt succeed; and those who fail might have succeeded nobly in something else. Success in any reputable employment is better than failure in the highest. Better, a thousand times better, to be a skillful worker with your hands than to be in the most intellectual of the professions without adequate brains. The higher education is good, good for every- body who can get it, provided men will be willing to use it in regions where they can use it effectively and not merely use it as stepping stones on which to mount into uncongenial and chilling atmospheres. The law is an eminently disciplinary and invigorating subject, and every man who studies it ought to be a stronger man in consequence, whatever may be his ultimate occupation. The law as a profession requires high natural endowment as well as culture, and these make the law pay as they make everything else pay. The man who has only ability enough to make a trade of the law, ought to keep out of it and do something else in which he might excel. It is of course possible to so crowd any profession that some really able and OF EDUCATED MEN 163 effective men may not find employment in it. But so long as there is work enough to go rounds a man's failure is the result of some defect in himself. The clergyman who can not get a pulpit has something un- pleasant in his personality^ his rhetoric, or his the* ology. I have not been trying to point out exactly the work which each man shall select as his own. But I have been pleading for a wider dissemination of edu- cated men in order both that all branches of honor- able labor may be energised and ennobled by in- creased knowledge in its management, and that the traditional professions may not be paralyzed by con- gestion. I would have students understand from an early day in their work, that they are not merely training as one trains in the gymnasium for health ; but that they are training for something as one trains for an athletic contest. The man who, by force of will and strength of arms, is to lift himself to a re- quired height thirty or forty times, must train him- self for that; and the man who is to win in the mile race, must train himself for that ; and in the final con- test the good all round man who has trained himself for nothing in particular, will get what he has trained for. One of the leading papers of our country has re- cently commented on the need of trained men in the following admirable language : '^Thiil is pre-eminently the age of the trained man ; the untrained man is at a great disadvantage in trying to make a place for himself or to solve the problem of success. Superior education was once regarded as essential to the suc- cess of the artist and the professional man, but it was assumed that natural sagacity and alertness were 164 THE DISSEMINATION sufficient capital for the business man. Under the conditions of modem life and the growing pressure of competition, it is now seen that special training is as necessary for the man of affairs as for the man of letters, law, or theology; and that the uneducated business man — the man, that is, who is not specially trained in his own field of enterprise — ^is a man doomed to failure. This truth, which is being rapidly recognized in this country, has long been recognized abroad. The partnership of the German university and the Gterman manufactory, which has been accom- plished in the last decade, has seriously menaced the supremacy of England and has led to the establish- ment in that country of schools for the training of business men along scientific lines. "The United States has already entered upon more intimate relations with the other nations, and, as time goes on, these relations will grow more and more intimate. Whatever form American expansion may take, it is certain that there will be the spread of the American spirit and the wide enlargement of Amer- ican activity and influence. We are to stand face to face in the great field of the modern world with the trained men of other countries. Our chances of success T^ill be small, if we depend upon American sagacity and alertness alone; we must carry into the foreign field the same special training, the same de* gree of expert skill, which are carried there by the German, the Englishman, and the Frenchman. "It will be impossible for the United States to do its work in the world unless it is willing to train its citizens for that work. The day of haphazard, happy- go-lucky, adventurous fortune seeking is over. We want as little of this spirit as possible in the far East ; OF EDUCATED MEN 165 we want no untrained officials at any point. Both the government and the business of the country must be represented by men schooled in affairs and able to understand the people with whom they deal." All this is very far from being what has been; but it certainly is what must be, if we would prosper in the business of the world. Here in our own hemisphere are the numerous countries of South America, whose business relations ought to be most intimate with this country. As a matter of fact I am told that the business of South America as conducted in the principal cities is to^ay largely in the hands of Germans, and that the Eng- lish trade officials are constantly sending home com- plaints and warnings in reference to German prog- ress in grasping trade. And there is no doubt that within the last six years Germany has gained con- trol of a much larger part of the world's trade than ever before, so that it does not require a prophet to foresee that both England and the United States are to ezi)erience much discomfort in the coming years from German competition. A good deal of this is explained by the "partnership of the university and the manufactory," referred to a few minutes ago. The German officials are trained for the very work they are expected to do. A German consul under- stands both the language and the business of the country in which he serves. He can tell what its de- mands are in the way of trade, what is the possibility of increased markets, and how it can be realized. We have been sending abroad as consuls for a long time local politicians, sent abroad not on account of their ability to render service to the country, but in pay- ment of services already rendered in carrying cau- 166 THE DISSEMINATION cuses or elections for some higher politician; men ignorant alike of the language and the business of the country to which they go, and almost as ignorant of the resources and capabilities of their own country — though I am glad to say that in the last few years some very efficient service to our trade has been ren- dered by American consuls. But we must take no risks. Men must go abroad who are fit to do the work abroad, and no others should on any account, by any party, be sent. Unless this rule is adhered to in the future far more than it ever has been, we are sure to go down in the industrial contest with such a country as Germany, if not at once, at least as soon as certain natural advantages which we enjoy at pres- ent shall have passed away, and the competition shall be on such a footing as will insure that the best men shall win. I can not but think that in this mat- ter, as in all the others that relate to the bearing of education upon national success, the colleges and universities of our country have a grave responsibil- ity, and that they ought most seriously to consider how they can render the best possible service in fit- ting men for the great variety of duties needed to be performed, and, in this way, insure the widest and the wisest dissemination of educated men, thus con- tributing eflfectually to the industrial production of the country and to the demand for the products of the country, in a word equalizing supply and demand while enlarging both. That will always bring pros- perity. And prosperity is what the country wants, a prosperity that is not accidental, but that results from a wise application of the industrial forces of the country to the production of what is needed. No position can be more honorable or more helpful in OF EDUCATED MEN 167 producing prosperity than what Carlyle calls cap- tains of labor. And it is quite possible, as it is emi- nently desirable, for many of our educated men to become captains of labor ; but they must be trained for this and to some extent the proper training can be gained only by specializing. While one man in a thousand among college graduates may be fitted by the culture and discipline process of education to formulate general principles affecting the industry and prosperity of the country, ten times that number can be trained to put those principles into success- ful operation so as to enlarge the industry and open new fields of labor to multitudes of people who have neither had training nor have now the power to do more than work under trained direction. The re- sources of our country are almost unlimited, and the possibility of controlling the most desirable indus- tries as well as the commerce of the world in the near future is so great as to amount almost to a certainty, if we will only train our students for the work that is to be done ; but it will never be if we train our stu- dents only to be lawyers and doctors and ministers and stump speakers. That did well enough perhaps fifty years ago, when other countries were doing the same, and trade competition had not reached the gi- gantic proportions which to-day make it a world problem and not a mere local problem as it was. But it will not do in the coming years. We must train not merely leaders of thought, but leaders of action, men who can discover and explain principles and no less men who can put principles into concrete effect- iveness. We do not want our work to be all Carlyle nor all Macaulay. We do not want to underestimate the spiritual side of man's nature, but we must not for- 12- 168 THE DISSEMINATION get the tremendous importance of the never-ending round of labor which the hundreds of millions of the human race for weal or for woe are, by the eternal laws of existence, compelled to tread. If the higher education can do anything to mitigate the sufferings and increase the joys of these millions, it should not neglect so grand an opportunity, so high a mission. And I know of no way in which it can discharge its duty in this respect more effectively than by saying to its scholars, for whom it has done its best, just what Jesus Christ said to his disciples before leaving them, ^^Go ye into all the world and preach th^ good news; teaching them what I have taught you." I have spoken to-day of a class, educated men. Not that I care more for them than for others, but because the occasion seemed to make this the proper topic. I certainly feel the deepest interest in the wel- fare of all classes, and in none a deeper interest than in the very poor and illiterate and discouraged from whose ranks in these days so many courageous young men and women are coming to swell the ranks of the educated. And yet the educated men are not a class. They come from every grade of society and from every nationality. In Minnesota, at least, they come from the families of the poor far more than from the families of the rich. I have spoken in the interest of all classes ; for whatever tends to elevate labor, to give it a nobler character, to put more intellect into it, and to give it greater success, tends to benefit everybody who works. Let us remember that we are one people with common interests, with a common destiny, I be- lieve, a glorious destiny. Let us not be so selfish as to forget our neighbor, nor so dull as not to know who is our neighbor. Bather let us try to love our neigh- OF EDUCATED MEN 169 bor as ourselves; and so plan our own work as not only to secure success for ourselves, but also to avoid interfering with the welfare of our neighbor. Let us place the best things highest, and so let us place coun- try above party, the nation above the state, the people above ourselves. Let 'us discuss all questions of pub- lic policy, of economic expediency, of industrial util- ity, without prejudice or bitterness. Let us do our duty faithfully as citizens, and each one of us seek that place and that work for which he is best fitted and in which he can do the most good. Then shall the great republic, founded by Washington and saved by Lincoln, be sure of a glorious immortality. THE EDUCATION WHICH OUR COUNTRY NEEDS* I believe that different peoples require different education and that the same people may require dif* ferent education at different stages of their devel- opment. There are peculiar conditions both of pop- ulation and of development in this country, which justify departures in education from the lines of work which may be the most desirable in some other countries. I need mention only three. First: Our population is not homogeneous. It is not changed merely from time to time by the death of the fathers and the succession of the children, but, on the contrary, it is constantly receiving accessions in large numbers from other countries and races, and other civilizations. Second: Our people are all equal in political rights and political power. It is as necessary for the day laborer to know what is best for the country as it is for the man of any other position. In many countries political power is vested in a few, and only these few have anything to say as to national policy. Practically it makes no difference whatever to them whether the millions know anything about political science, history, sociology or not. They are simply to *Delivered at the Twenty-seventh Annual Commencement of the University of Minnesota, June 1st, 1899. C 172 THE EDUCATION tread in the steps of their fathers, and the king and the nobility take care of the state. But with us this is all changed. The power is with the people. Leg- islation will be determined ultimately by the people. If the people are intelligent and wise, there will be consistency and continuity in legislation, but if the people are not intelligent and wise, they will go like an avalanche one year against a McEonley bill, and the next year grow frantic to reverse their former verdict and shout, ^^Oreat is protection and McKin- ley is its prophet" Third : Our country is not yet fully settled, and our population is exceedingly movable. Not only is there a regular movement from the old states to the new ones, but there is an irregular movement of population in all directions, from the West back to the East, to the South, to the Southwest, in any di- rection if there seems a chance of benefiting one's condition. The country has not yet been subdued. Ck)mparatively a small area of the country is inhab- ited by people among whom can be found three gen- erations of the same blood in the same place. Rest- lessness and change are our present characteristics. What we shall do next is uncertain. When a fam- ily's destiny is practically settled at birth, you can educate them for their work according to established rules of training. It is easy to do this in many thick- ly settled parts of Europe, where generation after generation from father to son the occupations are the same. But when, as in this country, the children of a family are destined to be scattered, and each child may in the course of his life live in a dozen states, come in contact with a dozen different grades of civilization, and quite probably pursue a dozen WHICH OUR COUNTRY NEEDS 173 different employments, from school-keeping in New Ehigland to mnning a cattle ranch in Montana, or a fmit ranch in Soathem California, the conditions are serionsly changed, and the problem how to har- monize this ever-moving population with its con- stantly changing environment and to assimilate it with the steady influx of a purely foreign element from every nation under heaven, becomes more dif- ficult and more discouraging. It is at once seen that it is going to take time to make of this mixed mass the splendid people that shall ultimately occupy this country and live restfuUy and peacefully with their kinsfolk and acquaintance in that part of the coun- try in which they have been born, keeping up the interests and promoting the works in which their fathers before them have been actively engaged. The situation, as may be seen, is not an ideal one. There is a tremendous waste of force in all direc- tions; and not a little of the educational work done under these conditions is like the training of the sportsman, who, having fired at a calf, supposing it to be a deer, and having failed to hit it, explained his lack of skill by saying that he fired so as to hit it if it were a deer and miss it if it were a calf. Quite frequently it is &. calf, and perhaps it is fortunate that we miss it as often as we do. This very hasty sketch of the shifting elements of our country suggests the fact that the training of large numbers of our people must be and is exceedingly superficial. We are an ingenious people, an inventive people, a people with wonderful adaptability. But there are altogether too many jacks-at-all-trades and good at none. Our mechanic arts, our agriculture, our business interests of every kind have suffered from 174 THE EDUCATION being undertaken by men with no adequate training for their work. The thorough knowledge of his busi- ness possessed by the artisan of Germany, would put our American artisans to the blush, if they had not long got past blushing. The Germans are trained for years to do what men in this country will under- take to do after acting as a helper for a few weeks. This results from our freedom which lets men do whatever they think they can do, whether they are qualified for it or not. As for spending years to learn a trade or a business, when one can get just as good wages if he has merely learned a smattering of the business, the American is not such a fool as to do that. In brief, our whole system of industry is waste- ful. Work that should be done once for all, is done over a dozen times because never done as it ought to be, and as it would be if every man in every occu- pation were not so free, but were required to know thoroughly the trade or profession which he under- takes to follow. There is to-day a demand for educated men in a multitude of occupations that formerly had no exist- ence or were conducted by uneducated men. The whole world of labor is to be engaged in the applica- tion of scientific principles to mechanics or to agri- culture, to transportation, to social life or municipal life. The haphazard method of doing things by guess has got to stop, and the laws of nature are to be ap- plied to nearly everything that invites human labor. Our education must fit men for all these varied oc- cupations, for which, in the olden time, there was no call to fit any one. The situation of itself would re- quire a revolution in the scope of our educational work. WHICH OUR COUNTRY NEEDS 175 Our whole country would be indignant if any one should say that we had not made great progress in education in the last half century; that our colleges and universities were no better than those of fifty years ago ; that our schools were not doing larger and better work than the schools of former times; and that our system of education did not really educate; and I think that the indignation of the country at such a statement would be just. Yet I do not by any means believe that we have reached an educational millennium. If any college officer or any teacher of a public school contemplates with perfect satisfaction the results of the training given to the average student, all I have to say is that he is easily satisfied. For myself, I frankly admit that, while guiding an educational institution in the best way I can, so as to make it most serviceable to the state from which it draws its life, and so as to keep it at least from being left high and dry on the shore, while the rest of the educational world sails proudly on, I am far from being certain that we are headed for the right port, that we are using the best forces in the best way, or that we are likely to be entirely satisfied with the results when our voyage is ended. But while admitting that our education is not perfect, I am far from thinking that most of the evils in our country are to be charged to defects in our educational system. They are evils which would ex- ist under our present conditions no matter what might be our theory or plan of education, but they are also evils which I am sure our educational work, faithfully continued, will remove. It has been customary to divide literature into 176 THE EDUCATION two kinds : The literature of knowledge and the lit- erature of power. I would divide education in the same way. Everyone who knows anything about the matter, will admit that, in respect to the amount of knowledge imparted, our institutions of learning are incomparably superior to those of former times. The sciences are practically the product of the present century, and the thorough and systematic teaching of the sciences has been possible but little more than a generation. History and literature were never taught as they are to-day until comparatively a few years ago. Other branches of learning might be named of which the same could be said. The student, when he completes his college course now, knows a great deal more certainly than the graduate knew fifty years ago. But how is it in respect to power, in respect to real intellectual vigor and the ability to impress oth- ers with his ideas and to guide the thought of the age. James T. Field, the great publisher, the friend of authors and scholars and no mean author and scholar himself, said some years ago, that no man of very marked power had graduated from any of the colleges of the country since 1855. All the emi- nent American authors like Emerson, Hawthorne, Longfellow, Lowell, and Holmes, preceded this dead line of 1855. Tale College has the honor to have three of its graduates at the present time on the bench of the Supreme Court of the United States. They have all been appointed in recent years, and they were all worthy of appointment; but they were all in col- lege before 1855, and the latest to graduate was in 1856. The Venezuela Commission, appointed by Presi- dent Cleveland, was composed of five distinguished WHICH OUR COUNTRY NEEDS 177 citizens, three of whom are graduates of Yale C!ol- lege. Oilman, White, and Brewer; all three were in college before 1856. Was Mr. Field's dictum correct, that the age of developed power in colleges ended, so far as appears, in 1856? Even if the dictum were true, it need not fill us with alarm. What Mr. Field especially lamented, I suppose, was the disappearance of the creative pow- er as represented in oratory, poetry, and prose litera- ture. But men write and think as clearly now as they ever did. The country needs to-day a good many things more than it needs a great poet. I say it even at the risk of being called a Philistine. What this age needs is knowledge. What this age wants to use for its own advancement to the highest civilization is knowledge. What this age, therefore, is trying to get is knowledge, — ^knowledge not for a favored class^ but for the world-^-every important fact and prin- ciple discovered to be used for the good of the race. It is not, therefore, necessarily discouraging if we are compelled to admit that, in our efforts to broaden the field of study and to satisfy the very general de- mand of the age for a more practical education, there seems to have been a certain loss of power to the in- dividual student. It is more in the seeming than in reality; more in the method of its application than in the power itself, and it does not by any means fol- low that there is in the aggregate a loss to the com- munity. Modern scholarship, despite its tendency to spe- cializing, is no longer a deep and narrow stream sweeping everything before it in its well-worn chan- nel ; it is rather a countless number of streams ever dividing into new and smaller ones, and ever seek- 178 THE EDUCATION ing for themaelves new channels, and these streams, though they may show little power, are, nevertheless, forever and unceasingly irrigating and fructifying broad territories that would otherwise be barren and unfruitful. The irrigating ditches that can make a sage brush desert bear abundantly orange and lemon, prune and apricot, grape and olive, are not as suggestive of pow- er as the noisy stream, whose falling waters turn the wheels of a great mill, but they are not less benefi- cent in their work, and their power, judged by results, is not less. That inexplicable power which lifts the sap from the roots and forces every branch and twig to bud and blossom until all nature is clothed in the garments of spring, is a silent force whose movements are unheard, but whose effect in transforming the world of nature, all the hurricanes in the universe can not equal. Power and noise are not synonymous terms. You remember that the seven liberal studies which the scholastics of the Middle Ages called the trivium and the quadrivium, were grammar, logic, and rhet- oric, the triple way to eloquence; and arithmetic, astronomy, geometry, and music, the quadrivial way to whatever else in culture was deemed desirable. We have not abandoned a single one of these studies, but we have added a great variety of other studies which the present age requires. Every student must choose as wisely as he can what will contribute most to his own success in life. When an institution provides instruction in every department that can reasonably be desired, ther^ is no antagonism created between the old education and the new. Both are provided, you take your choice, WHICH OUR COUNTRY NEEDS 179 the refreshments are served on the European plan. If you want to attain to eloquence, the old path is open to you with the footmarks of many generations still visible. On the other hand, in every well en- dowed university to-day, the single subject of biology, animal and plant life, is so broadly and minutely studied, that it might easily occupy the undivided attention of the student for the whole four years of college life, and the student might graduate an ac- curate observer of nature, a master of the scientific method of investigation, but with no knowledge of the principles of eloquence, and no power in its practice. Here, doubtless, would be a loss, not indeed without great gain, but a loss, if eloquence is to be regarded as the chief end of education. But the world for half a century has ceased to regard eloquence as the chief thing to be desired even in a statesman, and much less in a scholar. Chatham and Burke no long- er thunder in, the British Parliament, but men in Parliament to-day discuss the budget and home rule as practical questions very much as they would dis- cuss the value of different breeds of, cattle, or of ro- tation of crops. Facts have taken the place of tropes, and common sense fills up the void created by the de- parture of Greek and Latin quotations. The rhet- orician is at a discount even in Congress. The man who can tell all about the effect of taking the tariff off wool and putting tariff on hides, of making lumber free and of putting a duty on coal, who can lay down any one principle of finance which will be accepted as true by both the gold and silver men of the country, he is the man for the times, while the eloquent declaimer on the abstract rights and wrongs of capital and la- bor, is of little account. Legislation is no longer a 180 THE EDUCATION matter of feeling and emotion. It is a practical mat- ter coming home to men's business and bosoms, and to be decided largely by eyidence gathered by the pa- tient student of statistics in the field of political sci- ence. Edward Everett spoke two hours at Gettysburg — ^a pellucid stream of classical eloquence — and not fifty men in the country to-day either know or care what he said. Abraham Lincoln followed Everett with a speech of three minutes, a plain statement of facts appealing to the highest patriotism, and to-day thousands of Americans, from the child in school to the old man in the chimney corner, can tell what he said. The world has ceased to care much for mere words, however choice and elegant. Mr. E. L. Oodkin some time ago uttered a pro- longed wail over the disappearance from Congress and the state legislatures of men prominent for elo- quence, character, or the weight of their opinions. He said: ^^It is no exaggeration to say that there is hardly one left in the political world, who is lis- tened to for doctrine or instruction on any great pub- lic question. There are in Congress no orators, no financiers or economists, no scholars whom people like to hear from before making up their minds, no Clays, no Websters, no Calhouns, no Wrights, no Marcys, no Everetts, no Sewards, no Lincolns, no Fessendens, no TrumbuUs, no Sumners, no ^illustrations,' as the French call them, in any field. The talent of the coun- try, in fact, seems to have taken refuge in the great business corporations, and in the colleges, just as in the Middle Ages it took refuge in the monasteries." All of which deplorable condition of a£Fairs, Mr. Godkin ascribed to the tariff. It is at least pleasant WHICH OUR COUNTRY NEEDS 181 for UB to know that the colleges are not responsible for it, and that the talent which the country needs has taken refuge in the colleges, waiting doubtless for the country's call. Grant that the old time eloquence is no longer heard, that Webster and Clay will never speak to us again. Is the loss irreparable? Are we not gaining in other directions enough to compensate? Paradoxic- al as it may seem, the world is larger to-day than ever before, and yet all its parts are nearer to one another than ever before. The questions to be settled to-day are more difficult and more important than those of the past, because they are more complicated, and they affect the welfare of all mankind and not merely a particular class or coterie. And these questions need for their solution the patient study of the scientific student of politics and biology rather than the glow- ing appeals of the emotional orator. Indeed, I can not help feeling that we are entering upon a period of educational training which may not unfitly be con- trasted with that of even fifty years ago, very much as Macaulay contrasted the Baconian philosophy with the old philosophy. Tou remember what he said: ^^ords, and more words, and nothing but words, had been all the fruit of all the toil of all the most renowned sages of sixty generations.'' A thousand years had passed since Socrates taught. During all that time a large proportion of the ablest men of every generation had been employed in con- stant efforts to bring to perfection the old philosophy ; and what profitable truth had been discovered which we should not equally have known without it? Now ask what the Baconian philosophy has ef- fected. The answer is ready, and in the answer I 182 THE EDUCATION am sure yon will note the signs by which our modern education is and is to be distinguished. ^'It has lengthened life; it has mitigated pain; it has extinguished disease; it has increased the fer- tility of the soil; it has given new securities to the mariner; it has furnished new arms to the warrior; it has spanned great rivers and estuaries with bridges of form unknown to our fathers; it has guided the thunderbolt innocuously from heaven to earth ; it has lighted up the night with the splendor of the day; it has extended the range of the human vision ; it has multiplied the power of the human muscles; it has accelerated motion; it has annihilated distance; it has facilitated intercourse, correspondence, all friend- ly offices and dispatch of business ; it has enabled man to descend to the depths of the sea; to soar into the air; to penetrate securely into the noxious recesses of the earth; to travel the land in cars which whirl along without horses, and the ocean in ships which run ten knots an hour against the wind. These are but a part of its fruits and of its first fruits. For it is a philosophy which never rests, which has never attained, which is never perfect. Its law is progress. A point which yesterday was invisible is its goal to-day and will be its starting post to-morrow." Macaulay died in 1859. If he had lived till now what a mighty addition to this catalogue of the achievements of modern learning he might make, as he noted the progress in natural and physical sci- ence, in engineering, in surgery, in agriculture, in stock breeding, in locomotion, and in that most mys- terious of forces, electricity. Macaulay's catalogue of the achievements of mod- ern learning is inspiring. It shows what man has WHICH OUR COUNTRY NEEDS 183 done. But it does not touch the question as to what man is to be. Is he to be sweet or bitter in his tem- per? Is he to be refined or coarse, a gentleman or a boor, a Gladstone or a Oradgrind, in sympathy or out of sympathy with mankind, a glad listener to the voices of love, and beauty, and harmony, and art, and nature which is the art of God, or insensible to everything which his eye can not see nor his hand handle. We must not neglect the culture which will de- termine which of these the student is to be, while we grow wild over studies which may determine what the student shall be able to do. There is still left in the world a divine sense of beauty and poetry as contrib- uting to something in man to which bread and butter do not contribute. We want to make human life comfortable. We want to save men, if possible, from hunger and cold and misery. But we do not want to reduce universal human existence to a dead level of mere comfortable animal life. As Lear well says : ^^Allow not nature more than nature needs; man's life is cheap as beast's." There is something to man besides body. The mind, the soul, is itself to be cultivated. Taste is to be refined and gratified. Music, art, literature, none of these do for man what food does, but they create and direct far-reaching longings, aspirations, apti- tudes, they contribute to his growth and perfection and happiness, and they must never be excluded from our system of education as things not needed. Old Homer with his divine epic, and his words that echo the voices of nature in the most entrancing way, is as refining in his influence as ever; the Greek tragedies are as grand as ever, Virgil is as delightful, Shakes- —13 184 THE EDUCATION peare is as thousand-souled. All of these, if permitted to do their legitimate work for the student, will do for him something that the mere education of knowledge can not do. The glory of our modern education is its adapta- tion to the wants at once of the race and of the indi- vidual. It provides for both the material and spirit- ual wants of the student. It does not reject poetry and literature because chemistry and physics are more important; nor does it reject science because litera- ture gives a different kind of culture or a better cul- ture. It furnishes whatever will help man to do the best w^ork, and also whatever will help him to be the best man. And that is just what is needed. This provi- sion for both culture and knowledge is to-day the most marked feature of university life in this country. Har- vard has in some respects taken the lead; Johns Hopkins was the pioneer and the other universities, willingly or unwillingly, have followed. Even ven- erable old Oxford, where tradition has so long been law, has now, according to a recent writer, fallen into the hands of the specialists — ^has, as a grumbling writer says, substituted for the old idea of a liberal education, a multitude of narrow and technical schools, for cramming the memory and starving the intellect. "The old education may have been defect- ive," adds this writer, "but at least it was an edu- cation and not an apprenticeship." In all of our universities to-day, a student if he wishes an education can still get it; or, if he wishes what this writer calls an apprenticeship, he can get that. That is the best education which fits a man for the greatest usefulness. No man is likely to be very useful who does not observe accurately and WHICH OUR COUNTRY NEEDS 185 reason correctly, however much he may know. The man who can not draw just conclusions for his own guidance is not likely to be a safe guide for others in any field of complex human activity. Whatever dis- cipline to the intellect can possibly be given should be given, whether the intellect is to be applied to creating, inventing, adapting, using matter; or in- spiring, invigorating, or leading mind. In either case utility is the controlling consideration. Very few men can afford to use their brains merely as an object lesson of what discipline can accomplish, or as an attic for the storage of antiquated furniture. Most men must use what they get, be it culture or knowledge. They must, therefore, get what they can use. No doubt a plumber who can read Latin and Greek would be a very pleasant gentleman; but the plumber who can not read Latin and Greek will an- swer our purpose very well, if he will keep our water pipes from bursting, our gas pipes from leaking, our sewage from setting back into our laundry tubs, and the family from dying in consequence of un- sanitary conditions produced by himself. If we can not have both culture and mechanical skill in our plumber, let us by all means have that which is es- sential to his doing well the one thing which he pro- I)oses to do. The same thought applies to the whole body of engineers and students in technical schools. If they are to be masters of their technical work, they must forego to some extent general culture, as the classical student for culture foregoes the world of practical science. The most important and funda- mental rule of education is not to leave out, whether in foundation or in structure, the one thing neces- sary to fit us for what we propose to do. And the 186 THE EDUCATION • most important rule for educational institutions is the corollary of this : Make it possible for every stu- dent to get what is necessary for the best foundation at least in his future work. But the subject which the student in college needs especially to pursue is not necessarily that which appears to be most close- ly related to his future work. I have no doubt that chemistry and botany and mechanics are much more important to a farmer than Latin and Greek and Oerman are. But that does not settle the question as to what the boy who is to be a farmer ought to study when he goes to college. Undoubtedly plowing and harvesting and threshing are more essential to a farmer's success than readings writing^ and arith- metic. But the boy who is to be a farmer will nev- ertheless do well to learn reading^ writing, and arith- metic when he goes to school. And it is by no means certain that he will not do well to learn Latin, Greek, and German when he goes to college. For this farm- er's boy is to be not merely a farmer, but a citizen, a man among men. His voice is to be potent, not merely in the agricultural convention, but in the po- litical, the educational, the scientific, the religious con- vention as well. He is to be an important, he may be a controlling, influence in the state. For this high position of honorable and influential citizenship, he is to be trained not less than for his work on the farm. The specializing, which is the undoubted charac- teristic of our present education, must not be car- ried too far. An educated man should understand ]us business, but he should also know something be- sides his business. Impress a boy with the idea that he is to be a clergyman, and that everything he studies WHICH OUR COUNTRY NEEDS 187 must contribute directly to his success in the pulpit, and he may possibly become a very effective preacher, but he will be a very narrow man. He will reach people only at long range. At close quarters his lack, both of knowledge and interest respecting his people's work, will be painfully apparent. And so of any other occupation of responsibility. A speech is ef- fective when there is a man back of it. So with scholars in all pursuits. They must be real men or, if you please, real women, their manhood or womanhood supporting their scholarship, not depend- ing on it. And this brings us again to the axiom of the old education that discipline is the first essen- tial of education, that the man is to be developed before the specialist, and that the power to investi- gate and widely discriminate and judge, must be secured before profitable original investigation can be carried on. And the only real question involved is as to the method needed for the development of the faculties to the greatest efficiency, whether or not it shall be a method by which both culture and knowledge shall be secured at once. The old education confessedly did discipline the mind, but it imparted little useful knowledge. The tendency of much of the new education is to impart knowledge without contributing in a marked degree to mental discipline, or, if you please, without se- curing that much abused, but exceedingly valuable thing, culture. For it is this which after all is to be the charm of the scholar, whether he be statesman, professor, or artisan. It is this for which our sec- ondary schools ought to prepare, and of which our higher education ought still to be mindful. But the needs of the present age can never be met by culture 188 THE EDUCATION alone. Into the broad and ever expanding fields of knowledge the cultnred scholar must be guided, and from these fields he must not be permitted to with- draw till he has learned something of what they con- tain, and, still better, has learned the wisest method of exploring the entire fields so far as his needs may require. It must be a gratification to every friend of learn- ing, that in the laboratories of our universities, so many bright undergraduates and graduates, so many well-trained scholars, are to-day engaged in the work of exploring new fields of knowledge. We have in this age what we did not have even twenty years ago, large numbers of young men who are spe- cialists, many of them able to show with very just pride their Ph. D. diplomas, received at universities abroad or in this country, for special attainments or investigations in some one direction; and many of these young men are admirably fitted, not only to train other young men along the lines which they themselves have followed, but also to awaken in others an enthusiasm of curiosity as to everything on the earth, under the earth, and in the waters of the sea, whether it be products of nature, peculiarities of the human mind, or unknown natural or social laws and forces. Under the growing stimulus of this ever engen- dered scholarly curiosity, there is being gathered in many institutions a mass of facts of every possible variety and on almost every conceivable subject, the exact puri)ose and value of some of which it is dif- ficult to determine, but all of which will be used by somebody, at some time, for some purpose as intel- ligible at least as that for which the political scientist ^ WHICH OUR COUNTRY NEEDS 189 gathers his statistics. The psychological laboratories, with their curious experiments and their investiga- tions of questions profound and trivial alike, are the latest examples of this kind of work. All this work of investigation and research is exceedingly stimulating, and one can hardly believe it possible that with so many bright and specially trained young doctors of philosophy, not merely pointing but lead- ing the way, there should not be a perceptible uplift of education, a marked advance in absolute knowl- edge and a decided increase of power in the student. For the intellectual results of original investi- gation are much more positive than those secured by memorizing the achievements or discoveries of oth- ers. What can possibly make a man more logical than a close adherence to the scientific method of investigation? What can be more real to a student than things as distinguished from words? What can be a greater inspiration to the investigator than the hope of finding something that will contribute to make man really master of the world, not merely of the beasts and the birds and the fishes, not merely of the soils and the forests and the mines, but of all the latent or half-known forces which operate or may operate to the injury or benefit of men? No doubt there will be a tremendous waste of mental force and time and labor expended by this increasing army of specially trained young men, who are to spend their days in seeing what they can find out and in preparing others to imitate their example. But that is not to be objected to. The whole sys- tem is a kind of intellectual experiment station. The work of experimenting never pays directly; but without it, progress is impossible. So our en- 190 THE EDUCATION thusiastic young masters or doctors, who are search- ing old records and plowing up ancient documents, or who are studiously harnessing mathematics to statesmanship, or are dragging the sea for new crea- tures, or searching the plains and forests for new specimens of fauna or flora, or are subjecting the human being to a microscopic examination to discov- er new physical, intellectual, or moral microbes, or who are taking the new-born babes to the psycholog- ical laboratories and watching with eagle eye the development of the infant so that the laws of growth may be accurately formulated and teachers may learn just when and bow the growing babes may in future be most wisely instructed, — ^all these working, search- ing, keen, thoughtful, earnest students, must even- tually do a world of good, and in the process they must get a world of good, though as I have intimated they will do a vast amount of work that will have no perceptible influence upon the future of humanity, though in most cases it will enable the young candi- date for fame to publish a pamphlet. I certainly recognize the value of this experimental work, even though much of it may be without definite results. Some of it will be of service, and that is the best we can hoi)e for in experimental work. It will ex- tend the area of knowledge. It will help to make man master of the world. And in the meantime edu- cation is no longer a teacher with a book cramming the pupil. It is rather the pupil under guidance of the teacher, investigating and demonstrating truth for himself, but still receiving from his teacher in- spiration in his work and an impulse towards every- thing that is manly and good. For laboratories and seminars, invaluable though they are, can never be WHICH OUR COUNTRY NEEDS 191 a substitute for the earnest, helpful, couscientious, and enthusiastic teacher. It will be readily seen that certain things which have been true of education in the past must be equal- ly true of education in the future. Let me name a few. There is no royal road to learning. Teachers must still teach. Scholars must still study. The curriculum must embrace those studies which the world still agrees to call a classical course. Funda- mental discipline must not be overlooked. Culture must still be regarded as a most desirable and most necessary result of education. The ultimate result to be sought is power, but so long as the result is * I)ower, it does not seriously matter whether it be the power of a Webster or the power of an Edison, wlietlier it be the power to deal with intellects or the power to master the secrets of nature. I have insisted on knowledge as an essential but not as the only essential of education. There is an old idea which the world has cherished that must not be given up, and that is that the proper outcome of educational training, is character and enthusiasm. It is not enough that the student work in the lab- oratory and find out knowledge of witty inventions. The teacher must be to him an inspiration and an example. The danger of our present tendency is the loss of enthusiasm for everything except dry facts, and the absolute dethronement of the imagina- tion. As a graceful and thoughtful writer has re- cently pointed out "there is more inspiration for the young in the heroic deeds of men, even if not record- ed with all the accuracy of Dr. Dryasdust, than there i^ in the statistics of the Blue Book or the Acts of Parliament." The rising generation, however fa- 192 THE EDUCATION miliar it may become with nature and things mate- rial, must not be so trained as to be unmoved by heroism, patriotism, unselfishness, or by grandeur of soul or action. LESSONS FROM OUR COUNTRY'S fflSTORY* The Old Testament is largely a history of God's dealings with his peculiar people. I think that the guiding hand of God is as plainly to be seen in the history of our own national life as in that of the Hebrews; and that what he has done for us is a proper subject for consideration at this hour. More- over, it is a part of the work of public education to cultivate patriotism in the young; and I know of no way in which this can be more effectually done, than by setting clearly before them the noble deeds of the fathers as manifestly chosen of God for the work they were to do as were Abraham, Samuel, and David. It is impossible in a single brief address to do more than present the barest outline of a few important events and to draw from them the lesson of the hour ; but if, as a result, the young men and young women to whom I speak, shall feel a new enthusiasm for the flag of their country, and shall cherish a deeper determina- tion than before that the country which brave men saved in war, shall not perish through anarchy and corruption in time of peace, I shall not have spoken in vain. The New World having been discovered by Colum- bus, sailing under the flag of Spain, it was a provi- *DeIivered before the graduating class of the University of Min- nesota, May 31st, 1896. 194 LESSONS FROM OUR dence that saved the best part of the North American continent from the dominion of Spain and gave it to England instead. As a resnlt, our country was colonized by the best people of the world, intelligent, moral, freedom-loying, progressive, and patriotic, while many of them were imbued with the most ear- nest religious sentiment and feeling. The strip of country from Maine to Georgia on the Atlantic coast was colonized by English, French, Dutch, and Swedes, by Protestants and Catholics, by men seek- ing religious freedom and men seeking business suc- cess, all of them peculiarly independent and energetic. The colonies thus formed remained for a century and a half under the dominion of England, sharing with her the burdens of French and Indian wars, while struggling to subdue the forests and establish civiliza- tion; and then, after a war of eight years for inde- pendence, they established a government of their own and became the United States of America. It was apparently an accident, but really a provi- dence, by which at the close of the Revolutionary war, our western boundary was made the Mississippi River, and not the Allegheny Mountains. It looked for a time as if we were to be hemmed in on the south by Spain, on the west by Spain or France, on the north by Great Britain, and on the east by the navies of the Old World, — ^to be but an inferior power, liable at all times to the menace of the more powerful na- tions by whose territory we were surrounded, and with no possibility of expansion in any direction. It was providential events, unforeseen by us, which opened the way for the extension of our domain and made it possible for the great republic to reach, as it does to-day, from the Atlantic to the Pacific. COUNTRY'S HISTORY 195 At the close of the Seven Years' war in 1763, France surrendered to Spain by treaty the territory west of the Mississippi River called Louisiana. In 1800 Bonaparte, by treaty with Charles IV of Spain, regained possession of this territory including New Orleans on the east side of the Mississippi River. In 1803 there was a prospect of war between France and England. Bonaparte, fearing that England, by her superior naval force, would gain possession of Louisiana, ^'by a dash of diplomacy," as has been said, ^^as quick and as brilliant as his tactics on the field of battle, placed it beyond the reach of British power" — beyond the reach of any European power fortunately, by selling it to the United States. "1 know the value of Louisiana," he said. '^The English wish to take possession of it. They have already twenty ships of the line in the Gulf of Mexico. The conquest of Louisiana would be easy. I have not a moment to lose in putting it out of their reach." And he opened negotiations with the American minister at once. Fortunately, Thomas Jeflferson was presi- dent of the United States. He had sent James Mon- roe to Paris fully informed as to the President's views. Neither Jeflferson nor Monroe expected to secure this immense territory; but they were both wise enough to take it when it was oflFered. They did take it. It cost fifteen million dollars. The country thus purchased embraces to-day the states of Louisi- ana, Arkansas, Missouri, Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska, Minnesota west of the Mississippi, Colorado north of Arkansas, North Dakota, South Dakota, Wyoming, and Montana, and the Indian and Oklahoma terri- tories. It may be easily seen that but for this pur- chase all the other states and territories west of us 196 LESSONS FROM OUR which are now in the Union but were not included in Louisiana — Oregon, Washington, California, and others with Texas — ^would not now in any reasonable probability be ours, but our western border would have continued to be the Mississippi River. Napo- leon made up his mind to sell Louisiana, April 10, 1803. In twenty days negotiations were completed and the treaty was signed, and the territory was safe from British covetousness for all time, except for a few hours, January 8, 1815, when a British army in- terviewed for a short time General Andrew Jackson at New Orleans, and then concluded to retire. I know of no other single event in history brought about so simply and swiftly and unexpectedly that has had such a far-reaching and mighty influence on the development and history of a nation as the pur- chase of Louisiana has had on the development and history of the United States. It has brought to us untold good and untold evil. It has solidified us as a nation and has given us safe and certain bounda- ries. It has almost /torn us into fragments by civil war and wasted more treasure than the whole United States was worth when Louisiana was purchased, and the lives of almost as many vigorous men as the whole land then contained. But all honor to the men who dared to make the purchase and thus make it possible for the United States to become the power that she is, at the head of all the nations of the west- ern hemisphere and the friend of them all, I hope, — respected, if not loved, by the nations of the Old World, destined in the coming years, as her people shall grow in culture and in all excellencies of char- acter, to be a powerful factor in maintaining justice, order, and peace, even on the other side of the world. COUNTRY'S HISTORY 197 When portions of the territory west of the Missis- sippi began to apply for admission to the Union as states, a violent controvercfy arose as to whether they should be admitted as slave states. Louisiana ap- plied for admission in 1811, and then occurred the first agitation in Congress oyer the admission of a slave state. Missouri applied for admission in 1818, was kept out of the Union for two years, was then admitted as a slave state, and at the same time the Missouri Compromise was adopted, in accordance with which territory north of 36° 30' was to be free and territory south of it was to be slave. The excite- ment for the time had been intense and the debates in Congress were angry. But with the adoption of the Missouri Compromise the agitation ceased, and for the next twenty years slavery did not appear as a disturbing question in any important political con- vention. The agitation began again over the annexa- tion of Texas during the administration of John Ty- ler. The South wanted Texas for the strengthening of the slave power. There was a controversy pending at the same time over our northern boundary on the Pacific coast. The campaign cry of the dominant party in 1844 was 54° 40' or fight. But the South cared little for the territory in dispute because it would unquestionably be free territory. The South, as usual, had its own way. Texas was annexed, bringing as its result a war with Mexico. 54° 40' was given up in the dispute with England and 49° was accepted. Time does much to correct mistakes. Texas is now a free state and the United States will come to its own again when British Columbia comes in of its own choice under the star spangled banner. The Mexican war was brought to a glorious end 198 LESSONS FROM OUR by the victories of Taylor and Scott. With an Amer* ican army in the capital of Mexico, it was not difficult for us to make an advantageous treaty of peace, and a large section of Mexican territory, including Cali- fornia, Arizona, and New Mexico became the property of the United States. Although this territory had not been embraced in the Louisiana purchase and^ therefore, had not been covered by the provisions of the Missouri Ck>mpromise, the South not unnaturally expected that the line of 36° 30' would be run to the Pacific Ocean. This would have given New Mexico, Arizona, and the southern half of California to slav- ery. The population of California at the time was favorable to slavery. But man proposes; QoA dis- poses. In 1848 gold was discovered in California, and immediately an immense immigration set in from the north and east. Men who were able to go there went; and men who had no money went as the agents of others who furnished money. California was transformed. In 1849 a state constitution was adopted which prohibited slavery, and California ap- plied for admission to the Union as a free state. The terrible excitement of 1850 at once arose, convulsing Congress and country alike. The Senate of the United States in 1850 undoubt- edly contained a larger number of really distinguished men than ever before or since. At the head of these were Clay, Webster, and Calhoun. Some of the other names eminent then and not forgotten even now are Cass, Douglas, Jeflferson Davis, Benton, Foote, Sew- ard, Chase, Bell, Crittenden, King, Berrien, Hamlin^ Hale, Mangum, Badger, Mason, Hunter, Soule, Hous- ton, Busk, and Fremont. These were all men of brains, representing the best elements of their several COUNTRY'S HISTORY 199 states, and a respectable Senate as Senates now go, could have been formed out of other members of the Senate whom I have not named. The places of but few of these men have been filled by their successors. The outcome of the great debates in CJongress was the adoption of the Omnibus Bill, not as a whole, but in detail. California was admitted as a free state. Utah and New Mexico were provided with territorial governments. The boundary of Texas was adjusted and ten millions of dollars paid to Texas as indem- nity. The Fugitive Slave Bill was passed and the slave trade in the District of Columbia was abolished. The South had lost what it had wanted most, Califor- nia. It had got what it needed least, the Fugitive Slave Bill. For the perpetuation of its political power it had secured nothing in the present, and it had no great prospect of securing anything in the future of all the territory which had been acquired by the war in Mexico. But all parties agreed that the com- promise was final, that the slavery question was settled, and the platforms of both Whig and Demo- cratic National Conventions in 1862 so declared. Barely four years passed away when, by the pas- sage of the Kansas-Nebraska Bill in 1854, the Mis- souri Compromise of 1820 was annulled, the territory north of 36° 30' was opened to slavery and an agita- tion, more fierce than had ever been known, was in- augurated. Henry Clay had been elected to the Sen- ate by the unanimous vote of the legislature of Ken- tucky in 1850 because his services were needed for the i)eace of the country. He had successfully carried through Congress his compromise measures and had restored peace to the country, as men thought. He had died June 29, 1852. Of his great contemporaries -14 200 LESSONS FROM OUR and rivals Calhoun had died two years before, and Webster died four months later. The man who intro- duced the Kansas-Nebraska Bill was Archibald Dix- on, of Kentucky, the successor of Henry Clay. He undid all that Clay had done for peace and union. He lighted a fire to burn up the national agreements of 1820, but he kindled a conflagration in which the great temple of human slavery, which he sought to enlarge, was itself consumed. By the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Bill, the territory dedicated to free- dom was opened to slavery. Violence and fraud were subsequently resorted to in order to make Kansas a slave state. Missouri border ruffians, armed with pistols and guns, met on the plains of Kansas north- ern men armed with Sharp's rifles ; old John Brown, of Ossawatomie, was there fighting for freedom. Against all probabilities of the case, against the po- litical influence of the administration, at a time when the opposition to the administration was poorly or- ganized, Kansas was saved to freedom and the last effort of the advocates of slavery to augment their political power by increasing the area of slavery had failed. A party devoted to the principle that slavery should not be extended into the territories, had arisen under the stimulus of slavery's last effort, and almost carried the country in 1856 under John C. Fremont. In 1860 it elected as president, Abraham Lincoln, the man who said: "The Union can not exist half slave, half free." In the political campaign of 1860 the South had chosen defeat rather than possible success under Douglas. Their bitterness towards this states- man, because he would not submit to all their de- mands, probably brought about the election of Lin- coln. Douglas died three months after Mr. Lincoln's COUNTRY'S HISTORY 201 inauguration and after the Southern C!onf ederacy had been formed, but he did not die until he had atoned for all that he had done unwisely in the past, not un- til he had shown to his countrymen that his heart was loyal to the Union. In a letter dictated for publica- tion during his last illness, he said that only one course was left to patriotic men, and that was to sus- tain the Union, the Constitution, the government, and the flag, against all assailants. On his death-bed his last coherent words expressed an ardent wish for the honor and prosperity of his country and the "de- feat and dispersion of her enemies." The great Civil War had already begun when these words were spoken by the dying Douglas. On the twelfth day of April, 1861, Fort Sumter had been fired on by the Secessionists, and two days later, on the fourteenth day of April, its flag was lowered in surrender. It was just four years after that on the fourteenth of April, 1866, when the same flag was again raised over Sumter. What pen can describe the events which had taken place in those four years? I am speaking to you of time which, to most of you, is history, but which, to many of you, is biography. If we could have foreseen even then at the last mo- ment, the horrible hell of fratricidal strife into which we were about to plunge, should we not have drawn back and let the South depart in peace? If there could have been unrolled before us a vision of what was coming; of Bull Bun and Ball's Bluff, of Chan- cellorsville and Fredericksburg, of Antietam and Gettysburg, of Shiloh and Vicksburg, of Chicka- mauga and Missionary Bidge, of the Battles of the Wilderness, battlefields of all of them at last covered with dead Northern soldiers, sleeping the sleep which 202 LESSONS FROM OUR no wails of bereaved mothers or wives or children in Northern homes can waken, and never again to bless the eyes that for them shall shed unceasing tears for years to come — ^if such a vision could have been seen, would the North have dared to go forward with forti- tude and courage for the accomplishment of what we now see to have been the sublimest purpose of the Almighty for attaining the highest justice? But no such vision was vouchsafed. The batteries of Beaure- gard fired upon Sumter and the flag was lowered; and from that time for four years, the North simply followed the flag wherever it was lifted up and wher- ever it led. The flag — the stars and stripes — ^the red, white, and blue— emblem of our country, beautiful anywhere when seen among the emblems of all the nations of the world, but nowhere so beautiful as when amid danger and death it stands as the symbol of the nation's life, of that law and order which makes homes sacred, and wives and children safe, emblem of the nation's power with all the memories of which the past of our country is so full, and of all the hopes which make the future of our country so glorious, to every patriot, the flag means much; to none but the man without a country does the flag mean nothing ; but only the soldier knows all that the flag means. On the first of January, 1861, three months before the Civil War began, the army of the United States consisted of only 16,000 officers and men ; and before Mr. Lincoln was inaugurated, more than half of this force had been surrendered by General Triggs, com- manding in Texas, who hastened thus early to show himself a traitor. The armies raised for the suppres- sion of the rebellion ultimately contained a million COUNTRY'S HISTORY 203 men at one time. The government called for 2,759,- 000 men ; the number furnished was 2,667,000. The number of deaths in the army during the Civil War was 280,000. Ninety-six thousand ofElcers and men were killed in action or died of wounds. One hun- dred and eighty-four thousand officers and men died from disease or accident. How many died after the war as the result of disease contracted in the service, no one can tell. But the number must be large. How much the war cost in money I do not know. The national debt at the close of the war was nearly three thousand millions of dollars. If to this, then, be added the expenditure by the Confederates, the destruction of property, the loss of productive in- dustry, it ynll hardly seem unreasonable if we place the total loss to the country at not less than ten thou- sand millions of dollars. This is an immense sum of money — more than fifteen times the assessed value of all Minnesota. Yet large as it is, how little it repre- sents in comparison with the anguish and suffering in the homes of the land from which men had gone forth to battle, the news of whose death might come at any hour of the day or night. How the money all sinks into insignificance when we think of the men who gave up everything, just to fight for the Union ! These men for the most part were not conscripts, they were volunteers. They offered themselves for the service; not because they wished to die; not because they did not fear death; but because, fearing death and not wishing to die, they were yet willing to die rather than to have the Union perish. These men all knew what they were fighting for, and it seemed to them to be something worth fighting for. They were the truest kind of heroes — heroes who thought as well 204 LESSONS FROM OUR as fought. Two men were marching side by side to an attack on the enemy. One of these men was fear- less and laughing; the other was pale with fright. The one taunted the other with being afraid. "Afraid," replied the other, "of course I am afraid, and if you were half as afraid as I am, you would have run long ago." Heroism is something more than courage. It is courage created by a sense of duty and ennobled by service. Grant, in his Memoirs, says that when Sher- man started from Atlanta on his march to the sea, he had 60,000 as good soldiers as ever trod the earth; better than any European soldiers, because they not only worked like a machine, but the machine thought. It is your thinking soldier who is heroic, who, as he marches to death, knows what he is doing and what he is doing it for ; knows that he is making the great- est possible sacrifice for the greatest possible good for which such sacrifice could be made — the salvation of his country. He marches on, though he knows the almost inevitable result, for duty whispers to him his marching orders, and, at the last, service rendered glorifies a deed which, if uncalled for, would have been the extreme of folly. An intelligent perception of danger to be met, of service to be rendered, of duty to be done and when 'tis done, well done, makes the soldier a hero. In every case duty and service consecrate courage and make it heroic. The same courage, exhibited un- necessarily, would win applause from no one who is wise. You stand on the bank at Niagara Falls and watch the mighty river come down the swift rapids, merciless and resistless as the stream of Time, and at last plunge into the awful abyss below. Instinctively COUNTRY'S HISTORY 205 yon step back from the fearful cataract, lest some sudden impulse of your own, some toy of desperation, or some careless movement of another should hurl you into that mist-wreathed flood and bury you for- ever. What fate more terrible than to be thrown upon those angry waters with inevitable death be- fore you. What courage more sublime than deliber- ately to seek such a death ! Yet the man who jumps down the Falls of Niagara is no hero. Without duty, without service, he dies a suicide and a fool; while the soldier, who, in the love of his country and the discharge of his duty, marches to a no less certain death, before the cannon's mouth or the deadly rifle- pit — not all the ages of etemily can blot out his glory from the memory of Ood and men, for he dies that others may live. The two periods of fifteen years each from 1774 to 1789 and from 1850 to 1865, are remarkable alike in the condition of affairs at the beginning and in the magnitude of the results achieved at the end. In 1774 George III was king. In 1850 slavery was king. The first period of fifteen years extinguished a peo- ple's loyalty to their king and mother country, ac- customed them to the idea of independence, secured independence, organized a new nation with a new system of government, and made Gteorge Washington president of the republic. The second period of fifteen years destroyed a people's devotion to slavery as protected by the Constitution, created a new dec- laration of independence, abolished slavery, and as- sured the continuance of the republic in accord with the principles of the fathers, without sectional divi- sions of marked importance. Such results could never have been secured by the opponents of slavery, 206 LESSONS FROM OUR if the friends of slavery had not thrown away the protection of the Constitution. It was the friends of slavery, seized with the madness which the gods send to those whom they would destroy, who voluntarily abandoned by rebellion the protection of the Consti- tution and thus gave the republic an opportunity to destroy slavery forever. Universal freedom could have been secured in no other way, and it was GK>d'8 will that it should be secured in this way. When the rebellion broke out our government had existed for more than seventy years. Our career on the whole had been peaceful and prosperous. As the years passed on, our example had not been without influence upon other countries. Humanity meant more than it did before the people anywhere governed themselves. Despotism was less sacred when seen to be unnecessary. The country had extended its area till it embraced every part of the continent which the most sensitive patriotism could deem necessary to our security. There had been, indeed, a war of words going on, as there always is in this country, but no serious disturbance had occurred, and very few peo- ple in the North at least believed that a civil war was at hand. On the twelfth of April, 1861, war was be- gun by the firing upon Fort Sumter. The response to that attack was the unlooked-for and magnificent uprising of the hitherto peaceable and unwarlike North. Party lines were forgotten. All men were Americans. The flag had been fired on by rebels. Men could hardly believe it. Senator Douglas, taking his stand at once in fa- vor of the Union, goes home to Illinois after Congress adjourns and receives an ovation from a legislature that had been politically opposed to him, which could COUNTRY'S HISTORY 207 hardly haye been surpassed if lincoln himself had been the one to be honored. Everywhere, men who had been fighting each other all their lives now joined hands to maintain the Union. No more cheering fact appears in all our history than this — that however much our people may differ as to the policy to be pur- sued, they do not differ in the feeling that the Union must be preserved. No man could doubt how the tide was running in the North forty-eight hours after the attack on Sumter. Minnesota was the first state to tender a regiment to save the Union, and Gettysburg can tell what kind of a regiment it was. Even com- mercial New York kindled into a glow of patriotism with the rest of the North. The children of to-day can not realize the sorrow and anguish crowded into the folloi^dng four years — North and South. Every- where beyond the border was bloodshed. Battles that would have made their participants and victors im- mortal in any other war, sank into insignificance be- fore the mightier contests in this war of the giants. In the eight largest battles of the war, the total of killed and wounded on the Union side was 112,000. And then there was Andersonville, with its prisoners slowly starving to death — how many, I suppose God only knows. It is impossible to picture it. But in vision the veterans see it, and the memory of the brave fellows who died, obscures somewhat the brightness of their joy, when they think of their country saved and what they did to save it. Nor were the battles all fought south of the Po- tomac. Almost every election in the Northern states was a fierce struggle over the question whether the war should go on, or the South be permitted to set up its Confederacy. A political campaign in those 208 LESSONS FROM OUR days was something more than a scramble for office. The questions at issue were such as appealed to the noblest feelings; and the best men in the coontrx were stirred to the depths of their heartB by the dis- cussion of these questions. Freedom or slavery for the territories ; union or disunion ; slavery or no slav- ery ; these were the themes upon which orators might well grow eloquent, and in settling which all the latent earnestness of the nation might well be called into action. Religion, philanthropy, loyally, patriot- ism, all united to kindle a lofty enthusiasm among the people, which has never been surpassed in this or any other country. And the sacrifices which were made,, as husbands, sons, brothers, fathers, went forth to* do battle for the country, were conspicuous for the unselfish devotion which characterized them, and they would have been conspicuous themselves but for the fact that they were so numerous and common. War demoralizes. But the great uplift of the nation to a higher moral purpose which carried us through the war of the rebellion, saved us from the demoral- ization of ordinary wars of conquest. It is a question sometimes raised whether great events produce great men or whether great men pro- duce great events. When John Brown's raid at Har- per's Ferry occurred in 1859, and the whole country was shaken by it, hardly one of the men who were to^ be the most prominent in the great Civil War, then only two years distant, had especially attracted the public attention. In the army, the name of Winfield Scott overshadowed all others; but when the trouble came, it was found that age and disease had left of Scott little but a name. He had already lived five years more than the allotted three score year* N COUNTRY'S HISTORY 20^ and ten when the Civil War began, and early in the first year of the war he retired from active service^ leaving the command of our forces to men untried in any large contests and for the most part unknown to fame. The story of our military commanders in the war is another illustration of the doctrine of evolution and of the survival of the fittest. Many were called, but few chosen. In the silent hero, who at last became the commanding general and whose plans guided all the armies of the Union to final victory, it would be hard to recognize the rough and not too successful tanner of Galena of five yeara before. The great man of the Republican party from the time of its organization was William H. Seward, of New York. He had been the leader of the Free Soil Whigs, of New York, as Millard Fillmore was the- leader of the Silver Gray Whigs or Conservatives in that state. Mr. Seward had been the honored governor in the Empire state. He had become a United States senator and had at once taken rank with the ablest men of that body. It was he, as likely to be the next presidential candidate of the Republican party, upon whom the Congressional Investigating Committee tried hardest to fasten some responsibility for, or complicity with, John Brown's raid into Virginia. Nobody at that time saw the coming man, who, almost from the backwoods, was to outstrip Mr. Seward in the race for the nomination and was to be entrusted with the hardest duties which any president has been called to perform. Yet, in a little law-office in central Illinois, the tall, gaunt, strong-faced man, who had triumphantly met Douglas in debate; a self-made man who did his own thinking; a man without experience 210 LES^NS FROM OUR in diplomacy and with little experience in legislation ; a man without the culture of the schools or the graces of manner that mark the well-bred gentleman ; a man^ in fact, of the blood of the poor Southern whites^ was waiting to hear whatever summons might come to him. It came — ^a summons to the presidency of the country. The great statesmen who had for years filled the public eye, all stood aside^ as perforce they must when the people will it, that this untried and almost unknown man might come to the front. But he came to the front, as conspicuous for his height as Saul among the people. And as the sad years of war and suffering rolled on, he proved him- self not less pre-eminent for all those intellectual and moral qualities which belong to the man who is both great and good. The most eloquent orators of our country have done their best to set Abraham Lincoln before the world as he was. I can not quote their words nor attempt in my own feeble way to impress upon you the grandeur of his character. He was the great- est figure of the century, raised up for a great occa- sion; and, having fulfilled his mission, he was, in a moment — in the moment of greatest joy — ^by the bul- let of an assassin, taken from the people who almost worshiped him and made to stand face to face with the unseen world. No other man in all history has had so many tears shed for him at death, as fell from the eyes of the American people when Abraham Lincoln died. The great commander whose military operations brought the war to a close, lived to enjoy the re- established peace, lived to be president of the re- public for eight years, lived to experience all that COUNTRY'S HISTORY 211 there is of comfort in human applause, and much of the bitterness which attends human censure; and when at last at Mt. McGregor, he lay for months the victim of an incurable disease, calmly waiting for the triumph of that Conqueror who conquers all, he was sustained and cheered by the expressions of sympathy and love which came to him from all classes of people in all parts of the country, among them not a few who under the Confederate flag had fought against him on many a field of battle. And so at last he passed away, his heart filled with the largest hope for the peace and prosperity of his coun- try. And so, one after another, the great men of the war have almost all passed away. Grant, Sher- man, Sheridan, Meade, Hancock, Thomas, Terry, and many others whose names you cherish in affectionate remembrance of what they were and what they did — all are gone and only one or two of the secondary luminaries still linger above the horizon. But when all are gone, and the great company of noble men who fought under them, shall have melted into dust, America will remain purer and nobler for what they did, more truly than ever before the land of the free. It is not enough that the country is free. A people who govern themselves are free; but to gov- ern well they must be intelligent, wise, and patriotic. The evidence is unmistakable and abundant that in our country to-day, the political power is not uni- formly in the hands of the intelligent, wise, and pa- triotic. Has our country been ennobled by its bap- tism in blood? Are personal rights more secure and is life more sacred than before the war? Are honor and integrity in public life more common, anl is cor- 212 LESSONS FROM OUR Tuption more rare? Is brotherhood more appreciated and injustice more hated? Is political ambition more modest than it was before Gettysburg was fought? Does Minnesota remember the heroism of her First Regiment which cost the lives of so many brave men? Does she remember the devotion of all her regiments, successful or unsuccessful, and will she guard the temples of law and government as resolutely as her soldiers defended the Union? These are questions that deserve at least attention; ques- tions which you yourselves by your future course will do much to answer. No war more just was ever waged than that for the preservation of the Union, and, as it proved, for the destruction of slavery. But a nation never yet went through a long and bloody war, no matter how just, and came out of it in as good condition as it was in when the war began. It has lost large num- bers of its bravest and best citizens; and this is es- pecially so when the soldiers are volunteers whose inspiration is patriotism. War tends to destroy the sacredness of life, makes it cheap, when so many are killed in every battle. Again, war tends to demoral- ize those engaged in it, a calamity avoided only when hearts are kept tender by the constant proofs of love from the dear ones at home. Again, war unsettles values, inflates the currency, produces deceptive mi- rages of wealth, excites greed, wastes billions, and yet Beems to make the nation richer, makes possible vast fortunes, and in every way stimulates all evil de- sires for gain. The nation breathes a new atmos- phere, looks at objects through a new medium, sees things out of all proportion, and the calm and rea- sonableness of the old days of i>eace are thoroughly COUNTRY'S HISTORY 213 destroyed even for those who have nothing to do but to direct their own business enterprises. It will take years to bring matters back to the sweet reasonableness of peaceful days. Many a se- vere lesson of business depression and financial ruin will be learned before the nation can resume its old- time patience and comfort. But America, however great may be her business depression, is yet rich and sixong in all things needed for comfort in life; and there is no reason why we should long be an unhappy people, if we will only learn to moderate our desires and to be content with enough. It will be a happy day for us when we learn to be content without being rich ; when immense fortunes are seen to be unnecessary for comfort ; and when an equitable distribution of wealth, brought about by diminished greed of capital and a universal partici- pation in labor, shall multiply the happy homes of our country, transform the vagrants into workmen, and the workmen into contented citizens having an assured support. The day for wasteful prodigality and empty ostentation has gone by. The time for economy, prudence, carefulness, the virtues of the fa- thers and mothers of the republic, has come. Let us then resolve that, so far as lies in our power, the land in which we live shall be not merely the land of freedom, but the land of justice to all, that the sacrifices of the past shall not have been made in vain; and that the great republic, founded by the faith of the fathers and sustained by the heroism of the sons, shall he kept by us true to the purpose for which it was established, to be administered by honest and patriotic men, and to be in reality the land of the free and the home of the brave. -->' SOME ADVICE TO YOUNG PHYSICIANS * Mr, President^ Ladies and Oentlemen: The variety of occasions on which I have of late been called upon to address public meetings, is, I find, seriously affecting my style, so that it is not as easy for me as formerly to adapt my remarks to the au- dience which I am to address. Thus, when, as now, I come before an assembly of medical ladies and gentlemen, I feel no disposition whatever to practice, but am rather disposed to preach ; whereas, when I go to church, I have no inclination to preach, but am sure to be strongly urged to practice. If this unfortunate tendency to say the right thing at the wrong time should be too strongly developed this evening, I am sure you will pardon me as being the victim of unfortunate circumstances. I have ac- cepted the very flattering invitation of the faculty of this college to speak to-night, not because I am conscious of any special fitness for the task, but be- cause I have a very genuine and intelligent interest in the work which this college is doing, a genuine interest because it is something more than a mere acquaintance with the gentlemen who conduct the college, and with the purposes which they may be supposed to have ; and an intelligent interest because *Delivered at the Commencement Exercises of Minneapolis Medical College in 1886. —15 216 ADVICE TO YOUNG PHYSICIANS I have taken some pains to ascertain the character of the work they are doing and the measure of suc- cess which attends their efforts; and I am glad to say that I have been greatly pleased with both. If^ then, I can aid the professors here in their work, can encourage them in their purposes, can strengthen them in public estimation in the^ slightest degree, or, if I can say anything that will be helpful to the young men who have now finished their course of professional studies, and who stand to-night face to face with the world, I should be very reluctant to refuse to do so. The relation of the medical profession to human welfare is too thoroughly understood and appreciated to require any special enforcement from me at this time. Sickness is sure to be the unwelcome visitor in every household. Death is the inevitable fate of every human being. Suffering more or less acute must be experienced by all. It is the mission of the doctor to relieve suffering, to cure sickness, and to repel death as long as possible. And since there is nothing which the human family values more than health, and nothing which it dreads more than death, the doctor is eagerly sought and welcomed as the ally of the suffering in their conflict with disease and death. The skill which can diagnose a case of illness, can foretell its probable course, and, at each stage of the disease, can devise and apply an effect- ive remedy, is something which ordinary common sense can not fail to value, and which ordinary hu- man nature can not fail to be grateful for. The prog- ress of medical science within a comparatively few years has been very marked; and the old time phy- sician would find much in the modern Sfystem of medi- ADVICE TO YOUNG PHYSICIANS 217 cine tliat would aurprise him. And I am not cer- tain that the medical schools of the country to-day feel entirely sure that twenty years hence they will even be standing upon the same foundations as at present. Certain fundamental principles will of course remain^ but it is no news to you that even medical schools have experienced some of that disturbance and unresty which, like a tidal wave, has swept over cultivated minds everywhere in the last few years and raised questions which could not at once be sat- isfactorily answered. But whatever may come in the future, we can not but note the fact that grati* tying progress has been made in the recent past. Science has brought under control a number of dis- eases that were formerly supposed to be incurable; has provided many new agencies for the relief of suf- fering; and has greatly enlarged the scope of the physician^s duties by adding to the list of remedial agents and of operations that are difficult and dan- gerous and yet capable of being successfully per- formed. The result has beeA not only an increased usefulness of the profession, but an elevation of the character of the profession as requiring higher in- tellectual qualities and more marvelous dexterity, the successful exercise of which is the strongest evi- dence of high powers, symmetrically developed in the physician. This advanced condition of medical science renders the profession an unsuitable field of labor for all that class of persons, however great may be their knowledge, who have not the power of keen and accurate observation, nor a sharply discriminat- ing logical faculty, nor the ability to make deft and delicate manipulations. And whenever a young phy- sician discovers that he is lacking in these respects, 218 ADVICE TO YOUNG PHYSICIANS he will do well to seek some other occupation as soon as may be. For he can have no assurance of suc- cess in medicine. That so many medical students are able to become successful practitioners, and have the courage to face the responsibilities of their pro- fession is to me a matter of surprise; while it is no less to me a cause of astonishment and regret that men, who know themselves to be destitute of medical learning and skill, should be found willing to trifle with the health and lives of confiding pa- tients. But in your case, gentlemen, it is fairly to be presumed that the first essentials of success, knowl- edge, and skill, have been already secured by you. These requisites for the successful practice of your profession have been provided by the patient care and ability of your professors, and by your faithful study and attention to the lectures and the clinics. You will superadd to these, by and by, what will be of the greatest value to you — experience. I sin- cerely trust that this experience may not cost you too much, and that it may be gained without any unnecessary physical suffering on the part of your patients or of mental anguish on your own part. But I am not here, gentlemen, as one of your pro- fession to give you special instruction respecting the technicalities of your science. 1 am to speak to you from my own experience and observation, not as a doctor, but as a man. The principles which I rec- ommend to you are those which underlie success in all professions and, to some extent, in all occupa- tions. I feel a very great degree of pleasure in hav- ing the opportunity to say some things to you that I hope may be remembered by you and may be of ADVICE TO YOUNG PHYSICIANS 219 service to you. If there is anything which I take si)e- cial pleasure in doings it is helping the young to find the road to a true success. Most men who have been for some time engaged in the battle of life have had a certain degree of wisdom pounded into them, if they did not get it in a more natural way ; and hence they are able, without any special merit on their part, to give advice to the young that is often worth more than the young are disposed to think. It is well for the young who are just about to engage in life's battle that they do not see what is before them as clearly as we do who are older. But because they do not see and are thus bright and joyous and hope- ful, they are all the more likely to be rudely shocked and saddened when the inevitable comes. And it is on this point, first of all, that I wish to warn you. If you have no faith in yourself, if you do not hon- estly believe that there is in you the making of a skillful physician, now is the time for you to pause in your career and find some other occupation. Suc- cess is not ordinarily to be gained by half-hearted men, who distrust themselves and their powers. There is wisdom in the saying — Possunt quia posse viden- tur. "They are able to do it because they appear to be able to do it"; or "They can because they think they can." There must be at least hope of success to induce us to put forth the exertions neces- sary for success. And if now you have no such hope, no such confidence in your power to win success, and in your merit to deserve success, now is the time to find it out, and so avoid the long and sickening wait- ing for what even you do not expect ever to come. But if you are determined to enter the profession, then first of all I exhort you to be patient and hope- 220 ADVICE TO YOUNG PHYSICIANS fill to the end. Study — you will be sure to have plenty of leisure to do so. Keep your office, if you want your office ultimately to keep you. Don't iso* late yourself, however, so completely as to forget that you were a man before you were a physician; remember that, while you may be storing up knowl- edge, you may also be in danger of becoming mor- bid and despondent, and therefore unsuited to the successful use of your knowledge. Keep cheerful^ if possible — ^and that you can not do for a long time without human companionship. Get friends, there- fore, even if you do not get patients, and let these friends help you to ward off the despondency and gloom which are pretty sure to threaten you, if you are obliged to wait a long time for practice. My heart bleeds for the long line of patient or despair- ing students, from the versatile Goldsmith down to the last year's graduate, who have suffered all that weary waiting and final despair can bring. But don't give up. Keep as cheerful a face as you can ; and be ready for what may happen. By and by something will happen and you will be set to work. Then if you do the work well, the worst will be over. A sin- gle month may suffice to transform you from a pa- tientless student, to a well-to-do practitioner. And now, when you are fairly started on your career, what will you be and do? Of course you will be anxious to make a first-class reputation, and I cer- tainly hope you may succeed not only in making the reputation but in deserving it — ^in other words that what you are as a physician will be as good as what you are supposed to be. I am speaking now of your professional reputation and character. But are you to be nothing more in the world than ADVICE TO YOUNG PHYSICIANS 221 a skillful physician? What of yon as a man? I do not mean what sort of character in the ordinary meaning of the term are you going to have as a man. It goes without saying that respectable people will not generally employ a doctor who has a bad char- acter. Sometimes a certain class of people will em- ploy a doctor who gets intoxicated. They apparently think that a man who is so able and skillful when he is nearly drunk, must be a man of tremendous ability if he ever gets sober. I recall a case of this kind. The doctor had a very large practice among his countrymen, but, gentlemen, his practice has been over for several years, and for months past he has been the inmate of a charitable public institution — his mind all gone — ^and death the only possible change that can come to him. But it is not of the effect of character upon your practice that I wish to speak. I wish rather to say something of the duty you owe to society in this respect. We all know that the forces which tend to de- moralize society, to make virtue a laughing stock and vice a delight, are very strong and very active. If I were to enumerate all those forces which are operating right here in this beautiful and, on the whole, peaceful city of Minneapolis, I should draw a picture at which humanity might both blush and weep, and which the lover of his race might shud- der to contemplate. Yet these forces are not worse here certainly than in most cities. If an army were approaching to destroy Minneapolis, how soon we should rally to defend our homes, and how easy it would be, comparatively, to repel the attack. We should know where to find the enemy. We could see them. We could know where to fire and when. But 222 ADVICE TO YOUNG PHYSICIANS the assaults of immorality and crime are so insidi- ous that it is with the utmost difficulty that society keeps itself up to its present excellence^ and it is with still greater difficulty that it makes any ad- vance. We call in to our aid education, and we say that, if all are educated, vice will be lessened and crime will almost disappear. And unless we are right the outlook for humanity is very dark, and the twentieth century will be worse than the nine- teenth. In such a condition of things how much de- pends upon the character and consequent influence of professional men. Let it be generally understood that the medical profession are simply selfish money getters, that they are ready to accept or reject truth and action according as their own personal interest may dictate, that they can not be relied on to stand by what is good nor to help put down what is evil, and how terribly the forces of evil are thereby strengthened. J^et the opposite be understood, and how all good forces are correspondingly strengthened. You have it in your power to do great good as a profession outside of the mere healing of the sick. If you take a position for or against anything that affects personal morals, you do it not as the clergy- man does as an ambassador from Ood, but from a thoroughly human view of the case and from your thorough knowledge of humanity and its needs. You are an educated class — a profession; your opportu- nities for influence are great; your right to influ- ence is great; your duty to exert influence is great. If, then, as an educated class in a profession giving you wonderful facilities for controlling popular thought and action, you use your opportunities for the best interests of humanity and of society, you ADVICE TO YOUNG PHYSICIANS 223 become a bulwark against evil and a strong support to all that is good. And that you ^111 do if you are men of good character. For character is not sim- ply negative. A man may never kill, nor steal, nor directly offend against the laws of society or of the commonwealth and yet not be a man of good char- acter. He may be simply a crouching, crawling, self- seeker, avoiding all responsibility and looking on without word or act, while evil and good contend for the mastery of the world. Is he a man of good character? No, either he has no character or a very bad one. Either he is nothing or what he is, is des- titute of goodness. It is because I recognize the tremendous power which the medical profession can exercise in form- ing the opinions of society and in guiding the tastes, the appetites, the passions of the human race, that I make this appeal to you. It is because if educa- tion is to be recognized as a necessary agent in pre- serving our institutions and the peace and prosperity of the human fanuly, educated men and especially those so far advanced as to have entered the pro- fessions must show what education has done for them and what they in turn are ready now to do for others. There is a common ground on which we can all stand and fight the battle for order and progress. It is that society shall be protected, and that for the protection of society all men shall be •educated, and that the things which common sense and professional knowledge condemn as evils shall be discouraged, whether or not other people who op- pose them do so for the same reasons as ourselves t)r not. You can co-operate with the sworn minister ot justice, the lawyer, and with the preacher of mer- 224 ADVICE TO YOUNG PHYSICIANS cy, the minister, though your grounds for action maj not be precisely the same as theirs. And now, gentlemen, haying made this appeal to your profession to take a decided stand on questions of public morality and to exert your powerful in- fluence, all the more powerful with many because you are seemingly governed by considerations of human science rather than of divine law, I close this part of my address with a bit of advice in the inter- est of the public good rather than of your professional success. It is this. Never sit on the fence between the friends and foes of measures vital to society,, unless you find yourself in the condition of the man who, when reproached for sitting on the fence, said : ^^yes, and I propose to stay there so long as it is so muddy on both sides." I took up the other day a work written by an eminent professor of medicine for the guidance of the profession in matters of common sense and busi- ness, and you will hardly be surprised to learn that I found more pages devoted to Bills, How to pre- sent bills, etc., than to any other topic. It is indeed an important subject and one in which you can hard- ly fail to take a deep and, I trust, an early interest I had in mind before I read this book to give you one little piece of advice, and I was very much surprised to find that my advice would not have been orthodox; nevertheless I shall give it. The author- ity to which I refer says : "Attendance on a beloved child justifies a special charge." Apparently this is put on the ground of the physician's special anxiety. But it seems to me strange that because a man loves his child he should pay more than the usual charge for the usual medical attendance. If the attendance ADVICE TO YOUNG PHYSICIANS 225 is unuBual an unusual charge would not be a special charge. I hope this is not recognized by the pro- fession as correct. Leave the rejoicing father some chance to show his gratitude. If you take all the money he has because the child was dear to him^ you leave him nothing with which to show his grati- tude. It is sometimes said that a doctor's bill is the last thing that people think of paying. I do not know how that may be. I can readily see that with people of limited income — and that means most people — ^the expenses of illness, not being looked for and, there- fore, not being reckoned into any estimate of ex- penses which they may have made, must be met by special retrenchment of expenses in other directions, or not be met at all. And, if the estimates of fam- ily expenses included nothing that was not neces- sary, the paying of the doctor's bill must be a work of difficulty, and doubtless the medical profession is obliged to do a great deal of work for which it receives no pay in this world, and, therefore, perforce, it lays; ap in the course of a long practice considerable treas- ure in heaven. And I am sure that, if the service is faithfully rendered and the failure to receive pay^ is accepted without grumbling and even with gra- ciousness of manner and a spirit of true charity wher- ever payment is practically impossible, no treasure could more truly be laid up in heaven than the fees, which you never receive. For they are earned in work like that in which the great Physician was en- gaged when on earth, and the failure to collect them is accepted with the same spirit of benevolence which moved him in his great work of human redemption. If I were a physician, I should indeed be unhappy^ 226 ADVICE TO YOUNG PHYSICIANS if I could not collect my bills so far as to pay for all that I and my family needed for comfort. But I am also sure that, if by my skill I could carry joy into the sorrowing households of the poor, could make the lame walk, or the blind see, or the fevered patient rise, I should carry nightly to my rest a spirit of divine peace in the consciousness that I had been able to do something to bless others, not for myself, but in His name. And I would never worry or fret, so long as I could honestly pay what I owed, if beyond that my only compensation were to be the prayers and blessings of mothers and fa- thers and children, restored to health and made happy by my fidelity and skill, or if even these prayers and blessings and expressions of gratitude were de- nied me, if I were only sustained by the thought of those blessed words : ^^Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these ye have done it unto me." But as a rule the laborer is worthy of his hire. The physician should be paid as promptly and as cheerfully as the marketman or the merchant; and the more clearly you recognize this fact yourselves, and enforce it on others by the prompt presentation of your bill when your work is done, the better it will be for all concerned. If you are a competent physician, no matter whether a young one or an old one, yon have earned your money, and you may collect it without any sense of shame on your part or any more unpleasant feeling on the part of your patient than bills usually create in the human fam- ily. It is only as you thus collect promptly and certainly from those who can pay, that you will be able cheerfully and even joyously to minister to ADVICE TO YOUNG PHYSICIANS 227 those who can not pay and do this with the same fidelity and attention that you would bestow if you expected to be paid. And now, gentlemen, having aided you as far as I can in the collection of your bills, I exhort you so to conduct your practice that you may feel, when- ever you receive the money for any bill, that you have fairly earned it, that you have not magnified the danger of the patient, have not prolonged his illness, have not continued your professional at- tendance longer than was necessary, have not in any way used his ignorance and your knowledge to swell your claim upon him beyond fair pay for needed service. If you do this, you may be sure that what- ever skill you have, will be appreciated and whatever service you render will be cheerfully paid for, and, what perhaps is of more importance to you, if the patient again needs a physician, he will send for you. Unhappy is the man who is never called a second time. But to be sure that you are called the second time, be just and as merciful as you can be — the first time. Let me remind you also, that your success in securing practice will depend not a little upon your manners; a sick room is a place where good-breeding and the manners of a gentleman are very much to be desired and are sure to be appre- ciated. The first essential of a gentleman is a kind heart, and a kind heart will usually show itself by a certain gentleness of manner ; though I have known very kind hearts concealed under a brusque de- meanor. You are not, however, to try to make your- selves over after the pattern of some one else. On the contrary you are always to be yourself, but your- self at your best. No two of your professors — sue- 228 ADVICE TO YOUNG PHYSICIANS cessfal practitioners as they are — are very much alike. I do not wish to say anything personal to the faculty, but, as I recall them, they seem to me to be men of marked indiyidnality, no two of whom would be easily mistaken for each other. Success, as you see, does not depend upon any one set of characteristics or any one tyi>e of breeding. But the bluff, outspoken, self-asserting, and positive man may have a charm as well as the refined, polite, and seemingly more courteous gentleman. The assump- tion of either character, if not natural to you, is to be avoided. I think nothing will so speedily strip a man of uncouthness and boorishness, and trans- form even the rudest into a gentleman as the accept- ance and practice of the law of love. If you feel right towards your fellowmen, you will generally treat them right. And what you lack in knowledge of etiquette will be more than made up by the sin- cere desire to add to the happiness of others. But good manners, even if they are nothing hut manners, are not to be despised and should be cultivated. The refined accent, the well-modulated voice, the light step, the graceful greeting, the neat apparel, all these things help and have their market value. Cultivate good manners then; and what you do not know on the subject, find out by observing the manners of others. But beyond this do not go. Never try to be just like somebody else. Be yourself, a manly, upright, conscientious, faithful gentleman, accepting and keeping sacred the confidences reposed in you by your patients and their friends, keeping yourself free from envy and jealousy of professional rivals, never forgetting the duties you owe to society as a man and accordingly standing up like a man for ADVICE TO YOUNG PHYSICIANS 229 nirhat is true and good. Do this, and you can not but succeed, if you have laid here, as I trust you have, a broad and solid foundation of knowledge of the science of medicine. And so congratulating you, •one and all, on having persevered to the end of your course and having completed one very important stage in your journey of life, I wish you all a pleas- ant and speedy introduction to the fields of practice, and very useful and very happy lives as physicians. IDEALS FOR BOYS * There are many ties which bind me to Shattuck School and which make my first appearance here to address you an occasion of special interest to me. Several teachers in this school at various times had been my pupils and personal friends be- fore they came to you. Some of your graduates have been students in the college with which I have been connected. One of them was more frequently at my house in New Haven and more intimate in my fam- ily than any other student whom I have ever known. I watched his progress through college with admira- tion. I saw him graduate with high honors. I saw him enter upon his subsequent work with joy and hope and the expectation of soon taking holy orders, and then I saw him die. All through his career in college I could trace the influence of Shattuck School, which, somewhat idealized doubtless by his lively imagination, had stamped itself ineffaceably upon his memory. In the pictures which he drew of your life here, pictures always drawn with a loving hand and from which everything unpleasant was carefully or unwittingly excluded, I came to know you, almost as well as I shall know you after my experience here to-day. Your rector became familiar to me before * Delivered at Shattuck School, Faribault, Minnesota, at Commence- ment, June 16th, 1887. —16 232 IDEALS FOR BOYS I saw. him. Your bishop, whose name is known wher ever the church of Christ exists, became in those days known to me in his individuality, his personal ap- pearance, and his personal characteristics almost as well as he is now. What these men had said and done was largely moulding that student's life and character all through college; and as I saw what a firm hold this school had gained on the imagination of the young student, how its influence was shaping for him a manly and a Christian life, nay more, how, though it were the blasting of all his hopes save one, he could go down into the dark valley and meet death with composure and with peace, saying, "It is all right," I could not but think of Shattuck as the American Bugby ; and of your rector and bishop as American types of that Thomas Arnold, whose spirit, pervading the school at Rugby like an inspira- tion, so lifted the boys in their scholarship, their character, and their religious life — Tom Brown's old master, whose death, you remember, so sobered the boy in the midst of his shooting in Scotland, and made him forsake his sports at once and go back to visit Rugby to shed his tears of sincere mourning by the grave of the teacher who had been to him and to so many such a power for good. I can not stand here to-day, in the midst of these scenes so familiar to me by description, but which, when first described to me, I did not expect ever to see — these scenes that even to me are so full of pre- cious memories and associations — I can not speak to these boys so full of life and hope, proud of what they have done and confident of their future, I can not look upon the happy faces of their friends and realize how their hopes center in the future of these IDEALS FOR BOYS 233 manly boys, without feeling more than ordinary emo- tion, as memory is busy reproducing the past and painting pictures of things, which, once familiar to me, I shall see no more but in memory ; nor can I real- ize my responsibility for what I shall say to these young students standing on the threshold of life, with- out a sense of my incompetence for the task before me. Yet I have not come here to sadden you. Least of all have 1 come here to preach. You boys can not have spent all these years in Shattuck without gain- ing a clear idea of the value of both education and religion, the things which prepare you for intercourse with your fellowmen and with God. Leaving, then, these subjects of high debate as things with which you may be presumed to be already sufftciently fa- miliar, I may be permitted as a teacher who has spent his life in intercourse with boys and young men and who to-day feels himself the younger for having lived with the young, to talk with you fa- miliarly upon some other and less imposing topics. As in passing through an undulating and hilly country you sometimes come to an eminence from the top of which it is possible to gain a clear view of the region through which you have passed, to take in at a glance and as a unit what you have been for hours looking at in its parts, so in life we come occasionally to days when we can and do look back upon our course for years past and realize as never before the wisdom or the folly of what we have been doing. Such a day is this to you. It is one of the great days of your life. I do not state it too strongly when 1 say that it is a day which you will never forget. High up on the dividing line between the I>ast and the future, a dividing line which is real be- 234 IDEALS FOR BOYS cause from this time your life inevitably undergoes a marked change, this day compels yon to look back and to remember what yon have been and have done, jnst as it invites you to look forward to what you are to be and to do. And as you thus look back what do you see? You have all had your good times, your sports and your fun. Doubtless you have all had your trials and your temptations here which you have met in the way that best suited your own natures. Doubtless some of you have been Tom Browns, and some, Harry Easts, and possibly some have been Arthurs. I hope you have all come through your trials safely, and that you are to-day good, manly fellows, looking life squarely in the face, and ready to meet it, \^ithout any undue expectation of favors, and without any fear. If you are such manly fellows, prepared to face life without fear or favor, your training here has not been in vain, whether you have learned little or much from the books which you have studied. Perhaps I shall astonish some of you and more likely I shall astonish your friends when I say to you, as I do now, that of all the good things which I suppose you have gained at Shattuck, I value least the knowledge which you have got from books and recitations. And yet your main business here has been, and rightly so, to get knowledge. In a certain sense, knowledge is power. Knowledge, therefore, got from books is not to be despised. But ta you at your age the knowledge is not so valuable as the getting of it. Said a great philosopher, "If God were to give me the choice between truth and the search for truth, I would choose the latter." It would be a wise choice. What a boy needs to get at school IDEALS FOR BOYS 235 is not a supply of knowledge that will last him during life — for he really uses in a direct way but very little of the knowledge that he gets at school, and quite likely ten years hence very few of you could pass the examinations through which you have just come. But in the getting of this knowledge your minds have been disciplined and you have be- come their masters, so that, whether in the future you are to pursue your studies further or are merely to deal with the world's practical business, you will be equal to the occasion, will be cool, calm, resolute, judicious, and invincible. And if you have got out of your school days and work what you ought to have got, it is just this, the power to meet and over- come the dif&culties of life and to avail yourself of the opportunities of life, whether or not you can explain years hence the intricacies of classical my- thology or of human history or of the genera and species of nature's children as accurately as you could once in the classroom. The important question is not whether you have inflated yourself with knowl- edge, but whether you have groTm by that which you have fed upon. Of all things deliver me from the scholastic dude, who is not a sufficiently vigorous scholar to have a creative mind, but who is so crammed and weighted with the fruits of other men's scholarship as to have no freedom of action in his own independent manhood. And this leads me to the very heart of what I wish to say to you. If there is any expression which, when applied to a young man, brings honor to him in my mind, it is the expression, "a manly fellow." It means so very much that is good, and the absence of so very much that is bad. "He is a manly fellow." 236 IDEALS FOR BOYS ''He dares do all that may become a man ; who dares do more is none." Both in what he dare do and what he dare not do, he is manly. For you will notice that it is quite as manly not to dare to do some things as it is to dare to do the boldest things. There is, for example, hardly any higher praise which a teacher can give a scholar than to say of him that ''he scorns to do a mean act." The boy of whom that can be said is the boy who is going to be in after years the kind of man whom you like to meet, whom you can trust, who, in western phraseology, "will do to tie to." He is going to be the man, who, wherever he lives, will be looked up to and be trusted by the community; will be a leader in all measures for the welfare of society; will be the man on whom his rector can lean with assurance; on whose judgment the business men of the place can rely; to whom the widow and the orphan can go for advice and comfort; and towards whom the eyes of those even who despise and hate the things which he esteems, T^all turn with involuntary admiration and respect. Doubt- less it is a great thing to be a successful orator, or to be eminent in literature, or to be a leader at the bar, or distinguished in church or state. But I tell you, boys, what this country needs is a larger sup- ply of manly fellows to fill in with, of manly fellows who will stand by one another in defence of every-^ thing good, who will hold on to the highest things and yet not let go of the people who are below them ; who, without any cant or hypocrisy but because in a manly way they believe in God and the things that are good, will do their best, by showing in their lives what Christianity really is, to prevent, in this age of hardness and bitterness and growing hate,. IDEALS FOR BOYS 237 the church of Christ from being separated by an impassable gulf from the men and women for whom Ohris't died. It is a glorious thing to be this sort of a man; and there never was an age or a coun- try in which such men were so needed or had so blessed a future before them, as now and here. They are needed not merely as commanders or as leaders in the church, but as privates and in society and business life; they are needed as examples to show that a truly manly fellow can do his duty wherever God puts him, in the ranks just as well as in com- mand. It such men that I wish you to be. And is it not to be such men that you have been trained? Look for a moment at the training you have received, and, first of all, your physical training. The body in its best development ought not to be the master, but when well-trained it is a most excellent serv- ant. The pugilist is an example of the sacrifice of the mental and moral nature to the physical. The bully is an example of cowardly pride in the low- est form of human power, and, if he be a school- boy, he is as contemptible an object on the playground as can well be imagined. But the young fellow who can strike one blow straight from the shoulder and not need to strike a second blow, when it is necessary to knock down a bully or some other enemy of hu- man peace or virtue, has had training that, as far as it goes, is not to be despised — ^and is to be despised none the more because it is so often abused and per- verted to bad uses, as every other kind of training and accomplishment is. An erect manly form, a well-developed chest, good strong lungs, muscles that know how to harden into steel at the command of the will, ease and grace of movement, a quick eye 238 IDEALS FOR BOYS and a ready hand, these are possessions that any father would desire his boy to have, and that any sensible boy would be glad to have. With such a physical deyelopment, the result of training and culture, and not the mere lavish and unappreciated and unrecognized gift of nature, the boy who is not a manly fellow, who is either brutal in the use of his sui>erior physical powers, or content to possess them alone without corresponding mental and moral strength, must have but a puny soul as the occupant of his splendid, earthly tabernacle. No true man can ever exalt the physical above the intellectual and spiritual. But the mind and soul, masters though they are and ought to be, are yet so dependent upon the body for the free and effective exercise of their functions, that in their interest alone too much care can hardly be taken to secure health, symmetry, and vigor of body. Now and then, indeed, in the world's history the fires of genius have burned bright enough in dwarfed, or crippled, or diseased bodies to illumi- nate the world; but they would have burned all the brighter and much longer had these bodies been well- formed and healthy and vigorous. The day has gone by for measuring a man's intellect by his physical weakness and disease, or for measuring his piety by his lack of flesh and blood. Skeletons are no longer regarded as the most efficient helpers for either mind or soul. So long then as the athletic sports of our schools and colleges are kept within proper limits as efficient helpers in the harmonious devel- opment of our boys' entire nature, they ought to be encouraged. It is only when they pass beyond these limits and produce physical culture at the expense of the intellectual, substituting large mus- IDEALS FOR BOYS 239 cles for great thoughts, swift feet for quick wits, and hardy grasping hands that can catch a ball for tender and capacious souls that can hold on to a conviction, that they become evil and ought to be brought within narrower limits. In the next place, consider your intellectual train- ing. What has it done for you? This depends upon various things, such as the course of study, the effi- ciency of the teachers, and the earnestness of the scholars. Ck>nceming these things as related to your school I know of course comparatively littie. Yet I know enough about these things here to be certain of one thing and that is, that your intellectual training here has done for you all that you would let it do. If you have been honest and faithful in your work, I can tell you of some of the things which you have learned ; and in order to do this I do not need to know what books yon have used or what studies you have pur- sued. The true outcome of all proper study at your age is growth, culture, character, and not facts. Let us look, then, at some few of the many things which you have learned, and see whether they are such things as Tidll help you to be manly fellows, and so whether the training here is likely to make manly fellows in the years that are to come. If you have been honest and faithful in your work, you have learned to think, to reason, to dis- criminate, to decide, those acts which are the essen- tials of success in active life. The thoughtless man, the unreasonable man, the man without discrimina- tion, the man unable to make up his mind with all the facts before him — ^none of these are very useful or very manly fellows. They are the waverers, "driven of the wind and tossed" ; they are the "dou- 240 IDEALS FOR BOYS ble-minded men unstable in all their ways." You have learned not to be such men. You have learned to trace effects back to causes, and from causes to anticipate effects. You have learned to under- stand, to some extent, nature, whether it be inani- mate nature or human nature. You have learned something of the forces and materials with which you are to deal in the inevitable struggle for existence,, and the skillful or unskillful management of which is to determine your success or failure. You have also learned, to some extent, that most important thing, to know yourself. You have leari^ed by com- petition with your companions that others are as. bright as you are, that others can do as good work as you can, and that the prizes of life are not to be yours without an effort; or, if you have easily led all your fellows, you have not been so dull as not to learn that the Admirable Crichton of one school may be but a very ordinary mortal when put into competition with the Admirable Crichtons of all the schools. And so, thankful for what you have learned, and for the powers which you possess, you are yet able to be modest while self-respectful, hopeful but not arrogant, in short a cultivated, thoughtful, ear- nest, manly fellow, who wants nothing of the world that he can not earn, and who does not look upon himself as either the favorite or the victim of for- tune. If you are all such manly fellows now as I have been describing, there is no reason why you should not continue to be such as long as you live, for the wholesome nurture of childhood and youth is for all time. There will never be any doubt where you stand. Draw a line between right and wrong, and IDEALS FOR BOYS 241 no one will ever be at a loss to determine on which side of that line you will be found. And this not merely because your intellects have been trained^ but because, in cultivating your understanding, you have not failed to learn that ''the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom; a good understandings have all they that do his commandments." I have said these things to you without any ref- erence to what you are proposing to be or to do. So far as being manly fellows is concerned, it doea not matter whether your business shall be to preach or to practice or to do neither. All useful labor is honorable, and there is no true work into which a cultivated mind and an honest heart can not bring^ the sunlight of God's approval. Whatever may be your work in life, do not forget the school in which you have spent these happy year* and in which you have been trained for usefulness. I like a boy who remembers with affection the place where he was educated and who speaks of it with enthusiasm. And when a boy does not remember his school with affection, it is generally not because the school was unworthy of remembrance, but be- cause he has been so absorbed in self that his en- vironments, his teachers, his fellow students, the daily routine of duties, the miniature world in which he has spent the best years of his life, have made no impression upon him, and so memory can never for him reproduce the past. But if the past be for- gotten we can draw from it neither instruction nor- delight. He, on the other hand, who pursues his course in school with earnestness and fidelity, who- opens his heart to all noble and generous feelings,, who catches something of the spirit and enthusiasm. 242 IDEALS FOR BOYS of the teachers^ who recognizes their absolute devo* tion to the school as an institution and their earn- est zeal to promote the highest interests of the boys committed to their charge^ can never, never forget the school in which he has received so much of good, in which he has experienced so much of joy, and which, as the years go on, will never cease to be to him an inspiration. May the memory of Shattuck be such an inspiration to every one of you. I hope as many of you as can will go on with your studies further and not be content to stop until you have gained at least what we call a liberal edu- cation. I hope this for your own sake, and for the country's sake. There is no country where the ^^sa- era fames aurr of Virgil, the accursed greed for gold, is so strong as with us — at least no country where men are so ready to devote their lives sys- tematically and without interruption or rest to the acquisition of wealth. But a man who sacrifices growth, learning, culture, for wealth, who gives his life for wealth alone, pays too high a price for what he gets. lie brought nothing into the world and he can carry nothing out. But what he is here, he will be here- after. Death strips us of all our luggage, but he can not tear from our minds and hearts the things which have entered into and become a part of our intellectual and spirtual being. For myself, I would rather enter the unseen world as an intelligent spirit that had fed and grown upon the bounty of God on earth, than as a dwarfed soul, whose only achieve- ment in life was represented by a pile of gold on earth, over which the heirs are already wrangling. It is better to be than to have. And now, students of Shattuck, whether my IDEALS FOR BOYS 243 ideas respecting your school are correct or not, it is in your power to make your school better even than it is, better certainly than it appears even to me. Every boy has his influence in determining the character of his school. There are fashions and customs in schools which the boys originate and which only the boys can destroy. If you have any such here that are unworthy of you, that are un- manly, that are unchristian, I pray you to destroy them; and let the most manly be the first to set his face against them. Whatever is good here, cherish and maintain. Be it yours to lift up Shattuck, to make it a school where the spirit of love shall be manifested in your daily lives, where a genuine and earnest devotion to sound scholarship shall pre- vail, where purity and peace shall abide, and where God shall be reverenced and honored in all that you do. THE WORK OF THE TEACHER* The apostle John is credited with having written the Book of Revelation and he has anticipated a good deal of the possible glory and splendor of the future^ so that it would be hard for the liveliest imagination to paint coming glories which could not be said to have been practically anticipated by John in his Revelation — and John is entitled to the credit of his vision. There are many bright men engaged in the work of education who are good talkers, who rarely talk twice alike, who have something new every day, and who in the aggregate seem to have been fairly suc- cessful in painting the future New Jerusalem of education — and they are entitled to the credit of their vision. But before the vision in John's Revelation can be realized, a great deal of hard work must be done, and they who do this work slowly and patiently lift up society and make better men and better citi*- zens, are entitled to the full honor for what they accomplish, and are not to be shut off as unprofit- able or unoriginal because they have never reached any ideals which had not been anticipated by John in his Book of Revelation. And in like manner the ^Delivered before the State Teachers' Association of Wisconsin, at Milwaukee, December 27th, 1906. 246 THE WORK OF THE TEACHER great army of teachers who patiently strive to make the most finished product out of the raw material furnished them, and who, holding fast to whatever wisdom experience has taught, are yet ready to wel- come new ideas and to try new methods, are not to be robbed of the honor which belongs to them for making it possible to realize the apocalyptic vi- sions of our educational seers. There is at the present time undoubtedly not a little unrest in educational circles. Thinking men criticise the work of schools and of colleges. It is claimed that the requirements for admission to the college are too high or too low, and that the high schools are run specially for the small numbers who wish to go to college, and that the studies ought to be such as will fit for the vocation to be followed. It is claimed that much time is wasted on unprofit- able studies; and that too many studies are pursued at once. It is claimed that the cramming process is so much insisted on that students have no time to think, while it is generally admitted that education ought to help a student to think, and that the student who merely absorbs and never thinks can not be said to be educated. It is claimed that our courses of study have too little relation to the work of life, and that our teach- ing does not take account of the varying capacities, tastes, and possible achievements of the students. It is claimed that traditional ideals have too large con^ trol, and inviting possibilities of a new character have too little control. It is claimed by some that, because a particular study is not profitable for every- body, it should be pursued by no one, and by others THE WORK OF THE TEACHER 247 that^ because a particular study is profitable to some, it should be pursued by everyone. It is claimed by some that too little attention is given to the analysis of the individual child's mind, and by others that overmuch attention to such study of the child's mind is more profitable in its results to the teacher than to the scholar. And I have no doubt that there is much reason for all of these varying and seem- ingly inconsistent criticisms. The fact is there is a measure of unrest and it arises from a conviction that we are not getting the best results from our education, are not getting such results as seem- ingly we ought to get from our largely expanded studies and our supposedly improved methods. But, really, when one considers the great vari- ety of topics, of character, and of ability involved in this work, it is rather surprising that we are doing as well as we are. For myself, I think that these differences of opinion respecting the wisdom and effi- ciency of our methods and scope of teaching arise for the most part from our different points of view; and that, if we could all look at the subject from the same point of view, we should be substantially agreed in our conclusions. We are all passing judg- ment not unskillfully on what we see, but we do not see everything. There are two sides to the shield and they are never alike, and no one looking at one side only can see what one looking at the other side sees. Perhaps it is not possible for any of us to see everything that some one else sees. It is* well, therefore, to profit as far as possible by the criti- cisms of men who have a different point of view from ours and who see what we can not see. Real wisdom will be gained when the wisest thought of —17 248 THE WORK OF THE TEACHER all the educational critics has been brought together and has been correlated. Important as may be the incidental knowledge imparted to the youngest pupils as an introduction to life, I suppose that we are all agreed that, after all, the fundamentals necessary to education are read- ing, writing, and arithmetic. To be able to read in an interesting manner is desirable, but it is sel- dom attained. We are forced, therefore, to be con- tent in most cases with the mere ability to read so as ourselves to understand what we read without the added accomplishment of giving pleasure by reading to others. This latter accomplishment I would secure for the pupil if I could without too great an expenditure of time and labor, but if the pupil had no special faculty for it, I would not waste time on it. He can at least read for himself, and, so long as he is content with that and does not offer to read to others, no great harm will be done. As it is not possible for everyone to have a ste- nographer and typewriter, it is still necessary to learn to write and spell. And I should prefer to have the student write in such a way as to show some individuality and personality and to spell so as not to show any such individuality. I confess that letters addressed to me in the modern vertical style where everyone's writing looks like every other one's writing never fail to give me a shudder, but I am not unreason- able, and, if the writing can be read, I can put up with it. That is the one thing necessary. If a pu- pil's writing is legible, I would not waste much time in cultivating a writing master's flourishes. And then, third, arithmetic. Everyone must un- derstand numbers and be able to add, subtract, mul- THE WORK OF THE TEACHER 249 tiply, and divide, ui order to deal with the humblest affairs of life. Doubtless all of the arithmetic might be learned without serious injury to the pupil, but there is a very considerable part of it that is of so little practical benefit that I would reduce the work to a minimum and make up for lack of breadth by practice and facility in calculations within the limits studied. Tour pupils who are to graduate from the schools with no education beyond these three subjects are intended for the lowest employ- ments of life, and the teacher's aim should be to make them as skillful in these three acquirements as possible, and then let the pupils do the best they can with life. As we ascend in the character and extent of studies, the number of pupils diminishes. I have long had a conviction that too much time altogether is spent on the study of geography. It is a study which should not be taken up till the child is mature enough to be interested in it, and it can then be mastered in a short time to such ^n extent as is necessary or profitable. While the pupil is learning to read, wTite, and compute, he should be taught to notice things, to to see in them all that is to be seen; he should be taught to sing and to draw. Drawing should be taught as soon as possible, for it is a most useful art, and it can from the first be made a pleasure and not an irksome task. Whether the scholar is to spend much or little time in school, a knowledge of drawing will be of great value to him as he goes into the work of life. It is a convenience, a help, and a constant source of pleasure, and may be the means of revealing genius if it exists. May I be pardoned if I pause here to empha- 250 THE WORK OF THE TEACHER size the importance of the work done in the coun- try school and in the lower grades of the city schools^ above which so many scholars never go. At the best no great amount of. learning can be acquired in these. Yet it is all the learning the scholars are to have, unless their taste for learning has been cultivated so that they will go on studying after they leave school. It is of the utmost importance that the teacher give the scholar impulse toward learning. If he does, who knows what the scholar may become. Abraham Lincoln, according to his own statement, never had more than one year of schooling. Elihu Burritt, master of fifty languages, acquired most of these without the aid of a teacher. The boy who has learned to read and who has been wisely supplied with knowledge interesting and suited to his age, will not generally stop learning when he leaves his humble school, and, if he has in him the making of a man, he will become one and will be heard from. When our boys and girls leave school at too young an age, do not, I pray you, let them go out discouraged and with failure written on their faces, but send them out with an impulse towards learning and with hoi)e writ large on their faces. We have discovered in recent years that science is not less useful for discipline than language is; that science, as Spencer long ago proved, is not hos- tile to religion but a friend and ally of religion; that the old course of study in classics and mathe- matics is just as good for the development of power as it ever was; and yet that knowledge that is to be used, may be acquired profitably while one is get- ting culture and power; that the man who is to be an electrical engineer does not need the same training THE WORK OF THE TEACHER 251 as a doctor, nor the agriculturist, the same train- ing as the clergyman, and that, speaking educa- tionally only, if you have money enough to provide teachers in sufficient number, the variety of possible courses for a profitable educational career may be very numerous and dissimilar. When I look at the many large volumes of pa- X>er8 and addresses printed annually by the National Education Association, papers and addresses which many of you must have heard, and, when I consider the vast amount of wisdom and new ideas annually provided for our teachers by educational speakers and journals, all of which the teachers of the country are expected to utilize in their practical work, I am sometimes a little fearful that our teach- ers may be in danger of being overwhelmed and buried under the ever-growing mountain of ideas piled up for their use. I am quite sure that in what I shall say I shall not add to the teacher's danger. I am not loaded with original ideas. I have in fact no pet theory of education. I have never made any attempt to invent one. I never shall make such at- tempt. What I kfiow is that education of some kind is essential to the welfare of our people and the se- curity of our nation; that the education needed va- ries with different people and different conditions; and that what we want to get by education is not simply knowledge but power, not merely to cram a child with learning but to develop him into a man. As an ultimate product, we want to make the child, first, capable of self-support; second, capable of use- ful service; third, happy in his work and with in- tellectual resources sufficient to be happy in his lei- sure; fourth, a patriotic citizen; fifth, a good man. 252 THE WORK OP THE TEACHER The vital question in education is, how can this be done? A moment's reflection upon the difficulty of the work in consequence of the almost unlimited variety of tendencies and aptitudes in children will show that the most important factor in making this work a success, whatever may be the educational theories in control, is the personality of the teacher. Some weeks ago I received from the editor of a magazine a series of questions, as I suppose many other people did, and among these questions was this in substance: What is the greatest need in educa- tion at the present time, and what the greatest hope for the future? To this I replied, that the greatest need is that the rising tide of education shall lift the millions of pupils to a higher moral elevation and that perhaps the greatest hope of the present is, that thousands of teachers recognize this need and are doing their best to bring about the desired re- sult; and the longer I think of this, the more con- vinced I am that the answer is a correct one. Knowl- edge is valuable; culture is valuable; but character is more valuable. What I wish to see is, not a uni- versal teaching in detail of what is right and what is wrong; that is impossible; but a universal teach- ing that what is right is to be done and that what is wrong is to be avoided. What we need is the cultivation of a moral attitude towards everything right and everything wrong. I can risk the pupil's knowing which of tri^o things is right and which is wTong, if I am certain that the pupil, when he knows what is right, will do it and will avoid the wrong. It needs no great amount of teaching to make the average student understand that theft, and graft, and murder, and hate, and lust, and revenge, are THE WORK OF THE TEACHER 253 not as good as their opposites. The great thing, as it seems to me, is, to inspire in our sudents a high sense of honor that will lead them to do the right and avoid the wrong; and in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred in all their experiences of life, they will never be at a loss to know which course is right and which course is wrong. While the inspiration of a high sense of honor and a sincere devotion to what is right, as opposed to what is wrong, is a substan- tial possibility that ought to appeal to the highest and best in every teacher, it is not so necessary for the teacher to burden himself with the details of a thousand rules, so as to make the pupil know what is right and what is wrong in every case, as it is to keep alive in the pupils the high resolve to do only what is right and honorable. You may not be able to teach the Bible in school; you may not be able to bring into operation any deep religious influence, but there is such an eternal distinction between right and wrong, that, even under these limitations, it is not necessary for our pupils to go out into the world ignorant as to what is right and what is wrong ; while it is absolutely possible that they shall go out into the world with their souls aglow with a deter- mination to do what is right, what is honorable, what is just and good. I would give more for a boy that scorns a mean act and whose sense of honor would defy the tempter in anything that is dishon- orable, leaving to his judgment the determination of what is honorable and what is dishonorable, than for a boy loaded down with specific rules as to what is right and what is wrong, and a soul that never has been stirred with a sense of personal honor, of per- sonal obligation, of personal duty. 254 THE WORK OF THE TEACHER Let the great army of teachers in every field in which they fight inspire the pupils in their schools with a high sense of honor, a deep sense of obli- gation, a noble sense of duty, and, best of all, let these teachers be to their scholars an example of the eternal fidelity to right. One other thing is possible and, as it seems to me, desirable. This country to-day has its thoughts fixed mainly on money, how to get it, how to keep it, how to spend it. The very poor think of money be- cause they need it, and God knows that they do need it. The fairly paid mechanic has his mind fixed on money because he sees so much of it created by labor, and he gets, as he thinks, such an unfair portion. The well-to-do think of money because of old age coming, or children to be provided for, and the uncertainty of the future; and the immensely rich think of money because they are intoxicated with their success in accumulating, and sober thought has become practically impossible. It is not a happy state of things when the whole thought of a people is directed to laying up treasure on earth — and (or them the Almighty is the dollar. Industry and econ- omy may well be encouraged and pupils may profit- ably be instructed in the practice of these virtues, but at least let us not encourage our pupils to think that the greatest object in life is to get money beyond our needs. Let us at least teach them that intellectual activity and morality and spirituality far transcend in importance superfluous wealth, and that, without these, life is no true life for either rich or poor. If we can inspire in our pupils a high sense of honor, a sincere desire to do right, and can keep them from becoming worshipers of mammon, THE WORK OF THE TEACHER 255 and can send them out into the world with a real appreciation of the joyB of spiritual and intellec- tual activity, we shall have accomplished the best work that it is possible for a teacher to do. To accomplish this, we teachers must be something like what we wish our scholars to be. There are many employments in which men and women engage with little or no other thought than that of securing the means of comfortable living; and the only test of the propriety of their choice is their success in getting a good livelihood by their vocation. Almost all kinds of what is called ^^busi- ness," agriculture, and, to some extent, the various mechanic arts, are of this nature. It matters little to the public in one sense whether a man in these employments is fitted for his work or not. If he is not, the public will not employ him; but what he fails to do others will do, and the wants of the public mil be met in spite of his failure, while, so far as he himself is concerned, if he succeeds in making money, he has attained his sole object with- out any regard whatever to service actually rendered. There are other employments whose relation to the public welfare is so positive that no one is jus- tified in entering them solely from considerations of money to be gained. Such in a striking degree is the ministry of the gospel. Such in a hardly less degree is medicine ; such to a very large degree ought to be the law, a profession entrusted with more power than any other and practically controlling all three branches of our national government; and such in as eminent a degree as any, and perhaps more than any other, is teaching. To the persons engaged in all of these employments, the very highest interests 256 THE WORK OF THE TEACHER are entrusted by their fellowmen, and any lack of ability, of skill, or of fidelity, may work not only evil, but irreparable evil. The scholar, intrusted to the care of an unfaithful or incompetent teacher, is losing the best years of his life ; is losing what he can never recover, opportunities to make rapid progress while the mind and the organs of speech are most re- sponsive to the will ; he is losing, too, what the repent- ant teacher, after he discovers the wrong done, can never bring back and restore to him. It is a grave responsibility, therefore, which one assumes when he becomes a teacher; and no one ought to become a teacher without a deep conscious- ness of this responsibility. No one ought to become a teacher unless he has good reason to suppose that he has the qualifications essential to success. Do I know enough to teach? If "yes," it is well so far. Knowledge is certainly the first essential. But some of the most learned men are the very worst teachers possible. They have no sense of perspective. They know so much that they forget how little it is .pos- sible for other people to know. Can I teach others what I myself know? If "yes," is it well so far. But some persons, abundantly able to teach, do not actually do good work because of moral inertia. They have no keen sense of duty. Can I be satisfied only with the assurance that my pupils are learning all that I am trying to teach them; can I waken in them a mental and moral enthusiasm which will carry them along with me in the work? If "yes," it is well in all respects. The teacher who can an- swer all of these questions in the afi^mative, who knows enough, and who can keep up his own en- thusiasm for knowledge and awaken the enthusiasm THE WORK OF THE TEACHER 257 of his pupils so that neither teacher nor pupil will be satisfied with anything less than a full under- standing of the matters taught, has a genuine call to be a teacher, just as much of a call as ever a man had to preach; an eminent fitness for the high and noble work to be done. And he who has this call can enter on his work and toil at it year after year, sure that he is sowing good seed that will ultimately produce imperishable harvests; for he is working upon that which is immortal, and the impress of his work will never be removed. Nay, let me not use so mechanical a figure, rather let me say, he is breathing the breath of life anew into that which, though of divine origin, would without his efforts become a clod. And yet, important as is this work and grave as is its responsibility, most x>^rsons come to it with no special training in the art of teaching and are obliged to find out by experience both their own capacities and defects. I think it is only fair to all concerned that those persons who have made a trial of their ability to teach and have failed, should relinquish the employment and should seek some other occupation. This is due to parents and to schol- ars and to the state as well as to the self-respect of the teachers themselves. It is due also to all con- cerned that those who contemplate engaging in this occupation should avail themselves of the special professional instruction afforded by the normal schools, and that they should carry forward their general education as far as possible in the highest institutions of learning within their reach. Do the best we may, we shall always have a large number of teachers making unsuccessful exx>eriments at 258 THE WORK OF THE TEACHER teaching. It ought to be the aim of all in authority to keep this number down to as small a figure as possible^ and to make the period of trial for those who will inevitably fail^ as short as possible^ and thus to reduce to a minimum what at the best is an evil of portentous dimensions. But there are all degrees of failure. There is the hox>eless failure, of which the less said the better. There is the partial failure, the cause of which may be discovered and removed. I suppose one great object of these educational conventions is to help those teachers who have not made a perfect success of their work, who have partially failed, to help them to regain courage by grasping new ideas and adopting new methods, and thus to recover what they have lost and to make a success of their future work. It is in this w^ay that the strong and successful are able to help their less fortunate, but perhaps not less able, professional brethren. It is well for teach- ers to have good theories, but they will learn more than theories by exi)erience. Every successful teacher knows that his work is not machine work. Mind and heart must be ready at every moment to meet a new emergency, to deal with peculiar material in a new way. What will stimulate one pupil will discourage another. We all know that the method that works like a charm with one class will be only partially successful with another. And strange to say, we know that. what are apparently the same characteristics will appear very different in different teachers, being attractive in one and repulsive in another. For example, a manner that is delightfully natural and graceful in one per- son, api)ears like affectation in another; what seems THE WORK OF THE TEACHER 259 like the most charming naivety and simplicity in one person appears like weakness of intellect in another ; and what api)ears like frankness and sincerity in one person seems like coarseness and want of refinement in another. In short the personality of everybody so affects what he says and does that you can seldom tell what will be the effect of one person's doing or saying a thing from knowing what was the effect when another person did or said it. I have known men of great learnipg, with minds well trained, with a good command of language, with no impediment of speech, with no repulsive personal features, and no deficiency of thought, in short with everything that seemed necessary to success,- who yet invariably put into their subject and their hearers such an amount of sleepiness as placed it beyond the power of the kind- est and best-intentioned hearer to derive much benefit from what they said. And it was hard to say just how they did it. Another person with no better tal- ents, culture, or thoughts could produce a good ef- fect; while these men simply failed. The same is true to some extent with teachers. Their personality^ that is, as Coleridge puts it, their individuality existing in itself but with a nature as a ground, must seriously affect the results of their teaching. Two teachers may have equal knowledge and equal earnest- ness of purpose, and the recitation room of the one may be a dreary task house and that of the other a de- lightful reception room, mainly because of the pres- ence or absence of some charm in the personality of the teacher. Of course I would not justify such an unreasonable preference for what is bright and winsome. The rightly constructed boy or girl would value knowledge for its own sake and look at that 260 THE WORK OF THE TEACHER rather than at the teacher; but then who ever saw the rightly constructed boy or girl? So far as my knowledge extends, all boys and girls prefer to re- ceive instruction from teachers who are pleasant and winsome rather than from those who are not; and most boys and girls retain this peculiarity of taste as long as they live. There are people, you know, who actually think that tea and coffee taste better when served in delicate china than they do when taken in the ponderous earthenware of a railroad eat- ing room. I admit that I have that prejudice my- self both in favor of china cups and agreeable people. I have dwelt thus briefly upon the influence of the personality of the teacher, in order to impress on every teacher the great importance of making that personality as attractive or at least as agreeable as possible. The teacher owes it to himself as well to the scholar and the work to do this. Closely connected with the personality of the teacher, so closely as after a time to become insep- arable from it in the mind of the scholar, are a few things so evidently desirable that they need only to be named to be appreciated. Such are neatness of ap- parel, cleanliness of person, a sweet breath, natural if possible, but artificial if necessary, pleasantness of manner, order and cleanness of the school room. Different rooms in the same school are sometimes astonishingly unlike. One room will be of the right temperature and the air as sweet as the most sensi- tive could desire; another room will be unreasonably hot, and filled with more odors than have made the city of Cologne the theme of the poet, and not at all of a character to encourage mental labor or to furnish hope of long life to the miserable pupils THE WORK OF THE TEACHER 261 there confined. There is, of course, more excuse for such a state of things in our climate than in a milder one; but we need good ventilation in every school room all the more because of the intense heat re- quired within to keep out the cold, because of the dryness of the air, and the lack of bathrooms in so many houses. Su,ppose now that the personal characteristics of the teacher and requirements for the school room are all right, what is the next thing to be noticed? Manifestly it is the speech of the teacher. A pleasant- faced teacher in a sweet comfortable school room may destroy all good impressions by the manner or mat- ter of her speech. I have often met people whose faces interested me until they began to speak, after which the feeling was one of repulsion. So I have met people whose faces did not interest me at all, who yet became delightful when they began* to talk. I regard correctness of speech and true copiousness of diction, that is a real command of language, as among the most necessary qualifications of the teacher. I am addressing, as I suppose, teachers of every grade of schools in the state. There rises before me a vision of the immense and almost infinitely varied w^ork which you have to do and which will never be done unless you do it. I see the multitude of school rooms all over the state, filled with scholars of various ages, various capacities, various degrees of refinement, various inherited qualities of mind and body, various prospects for life, and I recognize the fact that these children, so facile and pliant, are the fu- ture men and women who are to control the polit- ical, social, moral, intellectual, and religious life 262 THE WORK OF THE TEACHER • of the commonwealth. They have come from all kinds of homes^ but they are now in yonr hands. They have come with all varieties of thought and speech and manners, but they are now in your hands. What will you do with them? That is the question. What may not you do with them and for them, if you will? If I were to say no more I am sure that you would all have some perception of the reason why I so distinctly emphasize the importance of cor- rectness of speech and richness of diction in the teacher. You would perceive that there is a moral reason for it. In every properly conducted school ex- ercise there are two things going forward at the same time, one seen, the other unseen ; one purely intellec- tual, the other only partly so. The one may be a reci- tation no matter in what subject. The other is the kin- dling of that spirit which makes man ruler over nature and enables him to comprehend even the supernatural. The one may be accomplished by the clear exposition of the textbook; the other can be accomplished only by the teacher's becoming an example in speech and manner and thought of what the scholar's ideal should be: a perpetual guide and inspiration to all things beautiful and noble; and no teacher can be this whose speech is full of solecisms or improprieties, or whose vocabulary is meagre. For speech is the means by which the teacher exhibits his mind and heart to the scholar, just as certainly as the featurea of the face are the means by which he presents him- self as a recognizable individual; and it is not de- sirable that either should be uncouth or repulsive. It is said that in one of the leading countries of Europe, the teachers of the common schools are strictly charged "not to put new ideas into the heads THE WORK OF THE TEACHER 263 of the scholars." New ideas might kindle in these contented hewers of wood and drawers of water as- pirations after something better, might lead them to question the excellence of a social or political sys- tem that uniformly gives all the good things to one set of men and their children, and all the hard and bad things to another set, and that set themselves. So the quiet of the state must be preserved at all hazards, and that quiet is secured by training the chil- dren of the ignorant and unskillful and unambitious to be ignorant and unskillful and unambitious. Now how diflferent from all this is the work of the American teacher and the purpose of the American school. No matter where the school or what the scholars, the special business of the teacher is to put new ideas into the scholars' heads. The humblest scholar, whose home presents the least of worldly comfort, and who himself has the least promise of a high career, may yet have the brightest mind in the school, and neither family traditions nor family pov- erty will keep him from rising in the social scale, if the teacher is acute enough to see the possibilities and earnest enough to awaken aspirations for a more in- tellectual life. In not a few of our schools the habit of reading out of school is cultivated and the way thus opened for quickening even the dull intellects that illustrate too plainly the depressing influences of un- cultured ancestry. We want no classes in this coun- try who from generation to generation are to be kept down because they are illiterate and are to be kept illiterate in order that they may be kept down. A country that reckons among its brightest jewels the once poor country lads, Webster, Clay, Jackson, Lin- coln, and Qrant, desires nothing so much as that new -18 264 THE WORK OF THE TEACHER ideas shall be put into the minds of the young of every grade. Out of the low grade rooms and it may be the low grade schools will come some of the best scholars and most useful citizens of the state. The teacher^ therefore, is not to be guided in his work by any con- sideration of the class of scholars or of the grade of school which he teaches. The scholars everywhere are possible candidates for every position which so- ciety or the state can bestow, and they must be trained, therefore, to meet the possibilities. If they come to school unrefined and coarse, they must not be permitted to leave school in the same condition. The teacher must make them refined and polite. If they come vulgar and illiterate in. speech, the teacher must correct and purify their speech. Of course every teacher will try to impart knowledge, but with knowledge the scholar must get that without which even knowledge will be of little benefit, the ability to use it and to make oneself with it a power for good in the state. We expect to make a great deal more of some scholars than of others, but our rule should al- ways be to make as much as possible of all. Many a teacher, by discovering and developing genius in a pupil, has rendered the world a greater service than he could ever have rendered by any direct intellectual labor of his own. Some one asked Sir Humphry Davy what was his greatest discovery. The reply was: "The greatest discovery I ever made was Michael Faraday." Those who remember the kind- ness of Sir Humphry to the young and unknown Fara- day, and who call to mind the invaluable scientific work done by Faraday, and the line of eminent Eng- lish scientists who may be regarded as the intellectual children of Faraday, will be at no loss to discover the THE WORK OF THE TEACHER 265 truth of Sir Humphry Davy's statement. The scholar often becomes greater than his teacher and yet owes all his success and greatness to the teacher's percep- tion of the scholar's powers, and his wise encourage- ment to make the most of them. Under these circum- stances there is placed on the American teacher even of the common school an obligation to do for his pupils much more than to insure their learning the subjects embraced in the course of study. It is an obligation to help the scholar to rise above his sur- roundings, out of the rut in which his ancestors have gone, out of the inferiority with which they may have been contented; in short, to render the scholar as fit as possible to adorn higher positions to which his intellectual powers and attainments may be able to lift him. The scholar must not only be supplied with proper intellectual food, but he must, if I may so express myself, become accustomed to an intel- lectual atmosphere and inhale freely the air of cul- ture. This the teacher must supply, must l)ring with him to the school, must be constantly surrounded by. Now one of the first things necessary, at once the means and the evidence of social elevation, is cor- rectness of si)eech. That this correctness of speech is not as general in either scholars or teachers as it ought to be, we all know. I might give any number of illustrations. I have in mind three teachers, two of them of no little prominence, who in the first sen- tence that I ever heard spoken by them, violated the most elementary principles of grammar. The most eminent of the three could not have spoken worse if he had said "I done it" or "I seen it." The curious thing about the case was, that in my subsequent ac- quaintance with these persons there was no recur- 266 THE WORK OF THE TEACHER rence of such mistakes. How, then, did they happen to make such mistakes in the first sentence that passed their lips in my presence? Simply because they were taken by surprise and early habits of speech asserted themselves. If they had always been accustomed to speak correctly, they would have done so when oflf thdr guard as readily as when on their guard. They did not do so; and I have no doubt that their very good education rested on a substratum of violated grammar in early life. It will greatly benefit our schools, give them in all respects a better tone^ if we can banish from them in- correctness of speech, barbarisms, slang, often very expressive but often, too, very silly, idioms learned in the streets and never thought about sufficiently to have their real character appreciated. Of course no teacher will intentionally exhibit these improprieties as characteristic of his speech, but he can not help using them in school, if he allows himself to use them out of school. Even in the use of new words, which may ultimately prove to be good and be accepted as a part of the language, the teacher, remembering that he is not acting for himself alone, but is setting an example sure to be followed by his pupils, should be very conservative. He of all men may wisely fol- low the advice of Poi)e. In words, as fashions, the same rule will hold; Alike fantastic, if too new, or old: Be not the first by whom the new are tried, Nor yet the last to lay the old aside. "Evil communications corrupt good manners." Com- munications clothed in bad grammar, slang, low words, or incorrect language of any kind, are evil THE WORK OF THE TEACHER 267 communications^ and from a teacher are especially corrupting. The child that is trained at home to talk correctly, becomes in time practically master of the language and able to use it on all occasions with accuracy and precision, even if he has studied no treatise on gram- mar. And if, as he grows older,- he becomes a stu- dent of other languages, and masters the general principles of grammar that govern them, he can make his own application of those principles to English as found in the authors whom he reads and in the language which he hears. In other words, for his knowledge of English grammar he may go to the same sources whence the first writers of English grammar obtained their knowledge, viz., the works of the best writers and speakers. I have known very learned scholars, whose English was of undoubted correct- ness, who had never studied English grammar. But for most people a knowledge of the recognized rules of English grammar is desirable, and this is much more easily gained by studying grammar than by studying the best authors. The properly trained ^ child, however, who has always been required to speak correctly, will get along very well without this knowl- edge, because habit has made it easier for him to speak correctly than to speak incorrectly. But how is it with that much larger class who have never been trained to speak as they ought, whose fathers and mothers, brothers and sisters, friends and associates, are seemingly combined in one grand scheme of barbarism to murder the English language, or at least to destroy all harmony, all concord, all beauty; and thus to give it a savage rather than a cultivated character? These live in a perpetual at- 268 THE WORK OF THE TEACHER mosphere of bad grammar^ caused by either the ig- norance or the carelessness of friends. Inevitably they catch the corruptions of speech of those around them. He must have not only a bright mind but also a strong will, who, growing up under such influences^ can, after acquiring a knowledge of grammar, weed out from his speech undesirable expressions, and so train himself that the words which he ought to use will always come to his lips in proper order and shape. His experience will be like the effort to cultivate a piece of ground once sown with Canada thistles. No matter what you plant or how carefully you till, the thistles will come iip, and at the most unexpected moment show themselves. At last you think them dead. But relax your efforts, withdraw your watch- fulness, and you will soon learn that they are not dead, but as ready as ever to dispute the ground with the wholesome plants you wish to cultivate. So the scholar whose early home training or want of train- ing has allowed all kinds of solecisms to garnish his speech, will find, when he attempts to repair the evil, that knowing what is correct speech is not the same as speaking correctly and that when he would do good evil is present unto him. He will find that without perpetual watchfulness, the undesirable idioms of his early speech will crop out in conversation and in pub- lic addresses alike. Now, if this is true of the scholar^ who has really learned what is right, and who is really anxious to do what is right, what can we expect of that vastly larger class who, at best, never ac- quire more than, a formal knowledge of grammatical principles and who never are required to make their speech conform to these principles? Such a scholar might know every principle which Goold Brown has THE WORK OF THE TEACHER 269 incorporated in his monumental Cframmar of Oram" mars, and still be a perfect barbarian in his speech. For grammar differs from many other studies in this respect that its chief value lies in its application. It differs from algebra, for instance. A girl studies algebra^ learns all about equations with several un- known quantities. Possibly at some future day she may teach this. But there is very little probability that she will make any use of it otherwise. Knowl- edge which is good for nothing except to be taught is good for nothing as knowledge and is not worth teach- ing. Yet no one would say that the girl was not bene- fited by studying algebra. The benefit for her in the exceptional case supposed, lies not in the knowledge she has gained but in the discipline of getting it. Her reasoning faculties have been trained; her mind has been quickened ; her whole intellect brightened by the study. Take, too, even the case of geography supposed by many people to be the proi)er intellectual food for the youthful mind for a series of five or six years in school. What use will most of the scholars ever make of their knowledge of geography? It is pleasant and certainly desirable to know all about the surface of the earth. In the broadest sense the knowledge is valuable. But how much use will most scholars make of it? More or less according to circumstances, but in most cases very little. But now how is it with grammar? Here we have a study, the chief benefit from which is not gained in the process of studying, nor does it consist in the possession of the knowledge gained by study, but in the application and use of that knowledge. I am speaking, of course, of English grammar for an English-speaking people. Its value 270 THE WORK OF THE TEACHER is not all Bummed up and secured when the child leaves school, but it is practical and necessary through life. From the first word of greeting in the morning to the last good-night, with friends, with strangers, with the busy world, in the exercise of one's vocation, in society, in professional speech, always and everywhere a practical application of the principles of grammar is a necessity. And it is only as grammar is thus forever applied that it has for the English student a real and permanent value. It is only as the science is carried forward into an art that it rewards its learners. Now the practical trouble with us is that we are satisfied with teaching grammar or language or whatever else you choose to call it, as a science and that we so rarely go forward and teach it as an art. Composition does not do it, for in composition there is as much time for reflection, and choice of expres- sions, and consultation of authorities as one needs; the eye aids the mind in discriminating, and a final revision of errors is possible ; so that many a man can write correctly who never does and probably never can uniformly talk correctly. What is needed, how- ever, is the ability to speak correctly, not merely when we are on the alert and watchful of our speech, but always and under all circumstances ; and the only way in which we can get this ability is by cultivating a uniform habit of speaking as we ought. Public school teachers are or ought to be the dis- ciplined soldiers of civilization, fighting against a con- stant reactionary tendency to barbarism in speech. Emerson defined heroism as "a military attitude of the soul towards all evil." I like the definition. So the teacher must have a military attitude of soul towards all bad grammar. He must fight it wherever THE WORK OF THE TEACHER 271 it shows its unseemly form. Let us see what he can do to overcome the foe. First of all, as I have shown, he can be an example to his scholars. We all know the power of example. How it tells on character! What a power it is in an upright, manly life ! How necessary it is that we should practice what we preach if we are to exert any influence by our preaching, or by our teaching. We may change a single word and say with Portia, "it is a good teacher that follows his own instructions ; I can easier teach twenty what were good to be done than be one of the twenty to follow my own teaching." But that is the very thing that the teacher must do. He must follow his own teach- ing. He must talk according to the laws of grammar which he teaches. If he does, the scholar whose home influences in respect to language are not of the best, will notice the difference between the language heard at home and that heard at school; he will recognize the sui)eriorit7 of the latter; he will feel that to the teacher the observance of the rules of grammar is a matter of importance; and that, as a consequence, the teacher has a nobler speech than that with which he has hitherto been content; he will wish to secure such speech for himself, and he will secure it if he is not in the depths of his nature what old Thomas H. Benton, so long a senator from Missouri, would have called a vulgarian. A person of mature years, and possessing any sensibility, but without culture, will become con- strained in good society, being conscious that the words which at home drop so freely from his lips, are not suited to the atmosphere in which he is now placed. The difference between the Chicago girl and the Boston girl in their mode of expressing thought 272 THE WORK OF THE TEACHER has been for some time past a favorite topic of the newspaper wits, the western girl being usually repre- sented as frankly coarse and the Boston girl as ab- surdly refined. Neither of these is desirable, of course. Unite the frankness and the refinement in due propor- tions and you have the most charming manners pos- sible. In the presence of people possessing these manners all tendency alike to coarseness and to affec- tation of refinement will be repressed. So the scholar who has any disposition to improve will grow careful of his si)eech in the presence of the teacher who never allows himself to be careless and incorrect in speech. The living teacher can thus exert an influence more- powerful than any that can be exerted by all the Eng- lish classics, the reading of which is so much insisted on in these days as a method of teaching English. For the worst of the mischief is that one can rise from the- reading of the purest and most classical English au- thor, and immediately begin to talk in the illiterate way to which he has become accustomed. If the au- thor, such a master of pure vigorous English prose for example as Professor Huxley, or of prose, eloquent and poetical, without being oratory, as Frederic Har- rison, or such masters of style in general as Southey and De Quincey, — ^if any of these authors of such works as we put into our students' hands as models^ were to stand, a living man, in the presence of the scholar, the latter would blush at the thought of abusing language in his presence. The teacher must take the place of the living author, not of his book. He must make the scholar speak as he ought, not merely make him know how to speak as he ought. In the second place, it is not enough that the schol- ars be taught to parse and analyze and give rules. It: THE WORK OF THE TEACHER 275 is not enough that they can pick correct speech to pieces, and tell all about its construction and why it was made so. Synthesis and not analysis is the end we seek, to learn how to put words into correct sen- tences, and not how to take correct sentences apart and explain the relations of the words. The twa processes are not identical, though they are mutually helpful. One is theory; the other, practice. One is science ; the other, art. Now, as I believe that the best home training is that which begins early, the best home culture that which starts a child right and makes him speak correctly when he is young, instead of waiting till his speech is so full of errors as to make- their eradication almost a violence to nature, so I be- lieve that the school training in language and applied grammar should begin down in the lower rooms, and should be entirely practical. It should consist simply in teaching the children how to talk. They should be- made to si>eak correctly, whether they speak little or much. Young children are usually ready to talk when they have a chance. They will with little encourage- ment give an abundance of examples of the idioms and peculiarities of speech to which they are accustomed. But as they have caught these peculiarities from others, so they will be just as quick in catching the proper forms of expression if these are faithfully urged upon them. Of course the little child is not going to remember a correction as a grown person would. It will have to be line upon line and precept upon precept ; here a little and there a great deal ac- cording to the degree of illiteracy exhibited. But the child, thus trained year after year, in room after room, class after class, will be nearly certain to be- come a master of good English. In pursuance of thi» 274 THE WORK OF THE TEACHER object every teacher in the school should be a teacher of grammar, every recitation should be a practical exercise in grammar or in language, if you like the expression better. Correctness of speech should be re- quired everywhere and under all circumstances. Such a method would be sure to banish entirely from the speech of our most advanced scholars the solecisms which teachers now know to be very common. It would introduce good English into translations that now even in colleges are too frequently but inelegant and lawless suggestions of the meaning of the original. It would open the way for rhetorical work of a high character in which beauty and strength could be studied as well as clearness. In short, it would give the pupil the complete mastery of the essential prin- ciples of effective speech without which all artistic work in literature is impossible. It may be objected to this plan that such a course would make mere expression everything and the ac- quisition of knowledge nothing; that little progress in recitations could be made if every error were noted and corrected on the instant. I do not think so. On the contrary, after a time the progress of the class will be more rapid under this system than under the careless neglect which now too widely prevails. The discipline gained by the pupil under the constant necessity of being correct in his way of speaking will help him to be correct in what he says; and the lan- guage of teacher and pupil will serve the purpose for which language exists, the communication of thought. Teacher and pupil will understand each other readily and quickly because both speak the same dialect and that a correct one. But were it otherwise, I would much prefer that THE WORK OF THE TEACHER 275 a child should know less, and be able to make a proper and pleanant use of what knowledge it has, than that it should know more and yet disgrace itself by the grossest illiteracy every time it attempts to speak. The more one knows and the more opportunities one has had for securing culture, the more disgraceful be- come solecisms in speech. As a further means of promoting correctness of speech, special exercises in conversation would be most serviceable. In such exercises, let the class be taught to watch for and detect improper expressions and they will grow very keen in detecting them, first, in the speech of others and, then, as a necessary conse- quence, in their own. Let the teacher talk to the class, purposely using such incorrect expressions as he has noticed in the conversation of the scholars, it being understood that he is to make mistakes for them to correct during this exercise but not at other times. The critical faculty of the pupil will thus be culti- vated, and the necessary testing of actual speech at once by the principles of grammar will soon produce fruits in the improved language which he himself will use. And the scholars are quite likely to become deep- ly interested in such an exercise. It is as good as a game of tag. I am certain that such practical work as this, begun early and persisted in, tedious and trying to the patience though it often would doubtless be, would do more to secure accuracy of speech than all the analysis of compound complex sentences with their extensive nomenclature of elements; or all the formal parsing such as schoolhouses have echoed with for a century past — and I do not by any means under- rate the value of analysis and parsing. And is not the result worth trying for? What is 276 THE WORK OF THE TEACHER more important in education than correct habits of speech, the ability to say what you ithink? What more pitiable than the want of them? In conversation, in business, in society, in extempore speaking, in all genuine speech that is not reading, the bad habits which a man may have formed are sure to appear and to master him. Knowing what is right and yet con- scious that he is failing to express himself in the right way, he is sure to become embarrassed and to appear awkward by the consciousness that he is dis- playing his w^ant of such culture and training as good society ought to require. And if the case be that of a lady, it is still worse. What can be more painful than to hear vulgar idioms and bad grammar dropping from the lii)s of one, who in her feelings, her position, her character, her knowledge, everything but her speech, is a lady. Is not the result — ^the purification of -speech in our scholars — ^worth trying for, even if, as a consequence, the scholars should not learn quite so much of some other things, should not be able to tell the distance from Trebizond to Timbuctoo, nor the year in which Napoleon became First Consul? Is not the work worth trying for even if, as a consequence, the teachers should not be able to make out so many reports and our school statistics should in conse- quence be slightly diminished? But it is not grammatical correctness of speech alone which is desirable in the teacher. I have also indicated true copiousness of diction as being neces- sary. A teacher's vocabulary may be full of large words without his diction being rich. What the teach- er needs first of all is a vocabulary which, whether large or small, will enable him to make his meaning clear to the scholars. He must, therefore, not only THE WORK OF THE TEACHER 277 know the words that the scholars know^ but must know w^hat words the scholars understand so as to use them and not others. And in no other thing is there so much danger of making mistakes as in this. What is very familiar to us we are disposed to think every- body must know. Much valuable instruction is wasted simply because the language used is not understood. If we could look into the minds of our hearers when we are speaking, we should often be surprised to learn that they do not know the meaning of many words which we suppose that they understand as a matter of course. A young clergyman who had delivered a discourse in the place of an aged brother minister, requested the opinion of the latter respecting the sermon. "Oh," «aid he plainly, "many of the words you used were beyond the comprehension of your hearers. Thus, for instance, the word inference,' perhaps not half of my parishioners understand its meaning." "Inference, inference," exclaimed the young minister, "why every one must understand that." "I think you will find it not so," replied the old minister. "There's my clerk, now ; he prides himself upon his learning and in truth is very intelligent. We will try him. Zachariah, my brother here wishes you to draw an inference. Can you do it?" "Why, I am pretty strong," said the clerk, "but Johanadab, the coachman, is stronger than I. I'll ask him." Zachariah went out a few minutes to look after the coachman and returned. "Johanadab «ays he never tried to draw an inference, sir, but he reckons his horses can draw anything the traces will hold." The anecdote is instructive. It is not difficult to draw an inference from it. The old minister had learned by long experience the range of his people's 278 THE WORK OF THE TEACHER knowledge and the extent of their vocabulary; while the young minister thoughtlessly supposed that words which were familiar to him must be equally so to his hearers. As a consequence he preached over the heads of his hearers and not at all to their profit. The vocabulary of the teacher should include so much of the vocabulary of the scholar as is respectable but it should include many words that are not in the scholar's vocabulary, but which ought to be, and which in order to become a part of the scholar's vo- cabulary must be explained when used, and occasion for using which by the scholar must be made by the teacher. Our vocabularies do not mean the words we understand ; they mean the words we use. It is only when one uses a word and makes it his servant that it enters into his vocabulary. There is something ennobling in language that is clear, pure, expressive, and vigorous; language of which one need not be ashamed in any place, in any society; language that is always so choice that no new principle of selection is necessary in public speech. In the school room the language should be neither studiedly puerile nor ostentatiously grand; it should be respectful of the intelligence alike of the speaker and the hearer. I hope no one will suppose that I deem correct language and a good diction the most essential things in life. I know there are 'more important things. A good man who is illiterate is un- speakably better than a bad man with the most cul- tured speech. The man who said "I seen my duty and I done it," may, for anything I know, have been a very heroic person ; but we should not think the less of him if he had expressed himself in correct speech. I know that the purest souls may unconsciously THE WORK OF THE TEACHER 279 through ignorance, murder their native tongue as they address either their fellow-beings or their God. They have never learned better ; and, using the best within their knowledge, they are not degraded thereby. I am not finding any fault with these. But I do not wish the next generation of scholars to grow up like them. I am seeking to deepen the interest in your minds, teachers, respecting the future appearance, bearing, influence of the scholars under your care. They are soon to take the places of their parents, and our places when after a few years we shall have passed away. They are to determine the character of the civilization of the Northwest. No more docile pupils than these can be found in the world. They are quick to comprehend, wide-awake, and earnest to learn, ready to catch at anything new and interesting, and most ready of all to accept guidance from their teacher as the one who knows what is right. I ask you, shall the teacher in the presence of these scholars be content to be merely a day laborer, earning so much a day by a routine attention to school duties, geography, history, arithmetic; hearing recitations and, it may be, im- parting knowledge, while he is profoundly ignorant as to all that furnishes any evidence of real culture in the scholar and does not know whether the process of education is really fitting for life or not? If there are teachers who are content simply to go through the motions of teaching and who never stop to investi- gate the results of their work, I pray them either to reconstruct their plans of work and their theories of duty, or else to withdraw forever from a profession in which they are likely to do but little good, and from places that would be better filled by others. But I re- joice to believe that most of our teachers are not of —19 280 THE WORK OF THE TEACHER this character; that they are earnest to do for their scholars all that they can; and that nothing is more welcome to them than to be told how they can improve the work they are doing. The teaching of the various branches of knowledge is the perfecting of the various parts of a curiously intricate machine. Practical culture in language for which I plead, is putting the various parts of the machine together and making it possible for them to fulfill their mission. In other words it is the unifica- tion of knowledge and culture, the polishing and per- fecting of the complete man in addition to the devel- opment of the separate faculties, like i)erception, imagination, and reason. Begun in the early years of school life by the teacher, it can be carried forward and completed only by the study of genuine literature, by mixing, so to speak, in the world's best society, as Milton learned of the great poet of Italy, and Web- ster*s sublimest eloquence speaks of his familiarity with Milton. I have tried to set before you, not so much what it is important for you to do, as what it is important for you to he — ladies and gentlemen of refinement and taste, exhibiting these qualities in your manners and in your speech, and tacitly at least, and outspoken- ly when necessary, demanding these qualities in those committed to your care. Do I not know how much you have to contend with? Do I not know what in- fluences surround many of the children of whom you are expected to make intelligent scholars and refined ladies and gentlemen? I know it all; and I sympa- thize most heartily with you in the difficulties and dis- couragements of your work. But he yourselves what you ought to be, an example to your scholars; that at THE WORK OF THE TEACHER 281 least you can all be. Then do what you can ; and such is the nature of the human mind as it developsy that more and more as light enters it, not alone the one thing or the other that you have been trying to teach by school-work, or by precept, or by example, will be accepted and cherished by the pupil, but there will come to him some sense of the beauty of symmetry in culture, in character, in development, and with it an earnest longing to escape from whatever is low and degrading in character, in thought, and in speech; and there will come at the same time an equally earnest determination to be and to appear all that you in your long and seemingly unsuccessful e£forts have sought to make him. And when that hour comes, you, the faithful teacher, will have your reward ; and, if there be many scholars who have been inspired by you to seek the best things, what a fullness of reward will be yours! Toil on, then, teachers, no matter how humble may be your sphere, or how seemingly hopeless the difficulties which you have to encounter. That Divine Being, whose eye notes the fall of a sparrow, is not indifferent to the faithful labors of the humblest of his intelligent creatures. Somewhere — I know not where nor when — ^it may be just where you are now, it may be in higher fields of labor to which your ability and success may cause you to be called, but some- where, here or beyond. He will give to every one ac- cording as his work shall be. And I am sure that it is as true in the realm of intellectual as in that of spiritual evangelization, that "they that be wise, shall shine as the brightness of the firmament, and they that turn many to righteousness as the stars forever and ever." GEORGE WASHINGTON * We are assembled on this occasion to do honor to George Washington, the "Father of his Country/* and, in his own day, justly declared to be "first in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his country- men." It is eminently fitting that we should thus honor the memory of Washington, for the land in which we live with all its blessings of* liberty and peace, is in a large measure a heritage received by us from the patriotism and wisdom of Washington. Even a British statesman, Lord Brougham, once declared that until time shall be no more, a test of the progress which our race has made in wisdom and virtue, will be derived from the veneration paid to the immortal name of Washington. It will not be out of place and certainly can not be without interest, to present in a condensed form some of the leading events of Washington's life, for though we all know something of Washington, it may be fairly doubted whether any of us are as familiar with his career as we are with that of some of the brilliant generals and statesmen who have lived in more recent years. The home of the Washington family was on Bridge's Creek, near the banks of the Potomac in ^Delivered in Dania Hall, Minneapolis, February 22nd, 1896. 284 GEORGE WASHINGTON Virginia; and here George, the oldest of six children by his father's second marriage, was born on the twen- ty-second of February, 1732, one hundred sixty-four years ago. His father was a prosperous man, the owner of a number of estates in Virginia. He sent his oldest son, Lawrence, the fruit of a previous marriage^ to be educated in England. But no such education was provided for George. Indeed, his father died when George was only eleven years old, and George was left to the care of his mother, whom we all have heard of as "Mary, the mother of Washington." She was a wise and good mother, and I doubt not that Washing- ton owed more of his success in life to her counsels and training than he did to the schools. At all events^ it is pleasant to know that she lived forty-six years after her husband's death, lived to witness the tri- umphs of her son, and did not die until he was seated in the presidential chair. It is always to me a satis- faction when a good father and a good mother who have made sacrifices for their children and have wise- ly trained them, are permitted to live long enough to see their children come to honor and so to taste the fruits of their own labors. George Washington never went to college, never went to an academy or high school. The graduates of our Minneapolis high schools know ten times as much as Washington ever learned at school. Beading, writ- ing, and arithmetic, the three B's, were about all that he got at school ; but he subsequently had some special instruction in geometry, trigonometry, and surveying, and ultimately he adopted surveying as his profession. This choice of a profession had its direct bearing on his subsequent career. It led him into the woods of Virginia, it opened to his vision new and inviting land GEORGE WASHINGTON 285 further west than the existing settlements, in which new lands he made large investments; it made him acquainted with the Indians, their customs and spirit, and mode of warfare; it made him familiar with the country near the junction of the Allegheny and Mo- nongahela rivers at what is now the city of Pittsburg, a region on which both France and England had set covetous eyes, and in which later on the owner- ship was to be decided by gage of battle. The knowl- edge of the region and of the best methods of ad- vancing the English interests, made Washington an almost indispensable assistant to every British officer who was engaged in saving that country from the French. He himself was in command of the Virginia forces in one expedition ; but he was compelled by the French to surrender. No disgrace, however, attached to that. He was subsequently an aide to General Braddock, and was a participant in that fearful massacre which has always been known as Braddock's defeat, the description of which I can even now recall as one of the horrors of my childhood. But Washing- ton escaped. He had two horses shot under him and his clothes were pierced by four bullets. It is related that "many years afterwards, when he visited the re- gion on a peaceful mission, an old Indian came to see him as a wonder. He had, he said, leveled his rifle so often at Washington without effect, that he became persuaded that he was under the 'special protection of the Great Spirit and gave up the attempt. In Brad- dock's defeat, only four officers out of eighty-six on the English side were left alive and unwounded. Wash- ington himself in a letter to his brother attributed **his protection beyond all human probability or ex- pectation, to the all-powerful dispensations of Provi- 286 GEORGE WASHINGTON dence.'' Samuel Dayies, in his pulpit in Hanover County, urging men to enlist for the service, made this triily prophetic allusion to Washington's escape from death: ^•I may x>oint to that heroic youth, Colonel Washington, whom I can not but hope Provi- dence has hitherto preserved in so signal a manner for some important service to his country." Who of us can doubt that it was so? In January, 1759, Washington was married to Mrs. Martha CustiB, of the White House, County of New Kent. She was born the same year as Washing- ton ; at twenty-four was the widow of a wealthy land- ed proprietor, and was married at twenty-seven to Washington. She was worthy to be the wife of Wash- ington. The story of the courtship has often been told. "The first sight of the lady, at least in her wid- owhood, by the gallant Colonel, was on one of his mili- tary journeyings during the last campaign of the old French war. He was speeding to the council at Wil- liamsburg, on a special message to stir up aid for the camp, when, crossing the ferry over the Samunkey, a branch of York River, he was waylaid by one of the residents of the region, who compelled him, by the in- exorable laws of old Virginia hospitality, to stop for dinner at his mansion. The energetic officer, intent on despatch, was reluctant to yield a moment from his affairs of state, but there was no escape of such a guest from such a host. Within the house, he found Mrs. Custis, whose attractions reconciled even Washington to delay. He not only stayed to dine, but he passed the night a charmed guest, with his friendly entertain- er. The lady's residence, fortunately, was in the neighborhood of Williamsburg, and, a soldier's life requiring a prompt disi)osition of his opportunities, GEORGE WASHINGTON 287 the Colonel pressed his suit with vigor, and secured the lady at once in the midst of her suitors. He cor- responded with her constantly during the remainder of the campaign — he is said not to have been a very good hand at spelling, but perhaps he used a dic- tionary carefully when he was writing to her — ^at all events the wedding took place soon after with great eclat at the bride's estate at the White House. The honeymoon was the beginning of a new and pacific era of Washington's hitherto troubled military life." About this time he was elected a member of the House of Burgesses — as we should say he was elected to the Legislature. An incident is related of his ex- perience while a member. "The Speaker, by a vote of tlie House, having been directed to return thanks to him for his eminent military services, at once per- formed the duty with warmth and eloquence. Wash- ington rose to express his thanks, but like many other truly great men he was never a ready speaker, and he became too embarrassed to utter a syllable. 'Sit down, 3Ir. Washington,^ was the courteous relief of the gentleman who had addressed him, 'your modesty equals your valor, and that surpasses the power of any language I possess.' " Washington was constantly in attendance at the debates of the House, it being a maxim with him through life to execute punctually and thoroughly every task which he undertook. He shortly after took up his abode at Mount Ver- non, and from this place he wrote to a correspondent in London : "I am now, I believe, fixed at this seat with an agreeable partner for life, and I hope to find more happiness in retirement than I ever experienced amidst the wide and bustling world." For fifteen 288 GEORGE WASHINGTON years Washington lived the life of a country gentle- man at Mount Vernon, undisturbed by wars or great public duties. His life at this time is thus described : "The daily life of the gentleman planter is all the while going on, the crops of wheat and tobacco getting in, which were to be embarked beneath his eye on the broad bosom of the Potomac on their voyage to Eng- land and the West Indies." So well established was. his repute as a producer, that a barrel of flour bearing his brand was exempted from inspection in the port» of the West Indies. Cordial hospitality was going on within doors, and wholesome country sports without. He had hounds for the fox hunt; there were deer to be killed in his woods, abundant wild fowl on hia meadows in the season, and fisheries in the river at hia feet ; and that there might be no falling into rusticity^ came the annual state visits, when he was accompanied by Mrs. Washington, to the notable picked society at the capitals, Williamsburg and Annapolis. It was a hearty, generous life, fitted to breed manly thoughts and good resolutions against the coming time when he should again assume the sword. "In fine, look upon Washington at this or any other period of his life, we ever find him industrious, al- ways useful ; his activity and influence radiating from the center of domestic life, and his private virtue, to- the largest interests of the world." But the peace of Washington's life at Mount Ver- non was soon to be broken, and the gentleman planter was soon to be called away from his wheat and tobacco crops, to engage in the service of his country. The people of the American colonies had been the loyal subjects of the English crown for more than one hun- dred forty years, a period longer than that of our ex- GEORGE WASHINGTON 28» isteuce as a nation to-day. They had stood by the mother country through good report and evil report. They had fought Indians and French alike whenever the policy of the mother country had made it neces- sary. He had helped to wrest Canada from the French and give it to the English. They had faced the dangers and borne the burdens of Indian wars^ too often laughed at by the supercilious British regu- lars. They had no thought of independence so long as England had been decently just in her treatment of them. But when England began to impose direct taxes upon them while denying them all representa- tion in Parliament, the spirit of patriotism at once showed itself. Samuel Adams, of Massachusetts, led the way to the thought of independence. Patrick Henry, in the House of Burgesses of Virginia, led the way in the South. Washington was present when Henry delivered his terribly eloquent address — "Give me liberty or give me death." The government of George III was in that day just as ready to play the bully towards a weak opponent as the Salisbury government of England is to-day. It tried it with our fathers. Bunker Hill, Saratoga, Yorktown, and Independence were the result. God forbid that they should try it again, but, if they do, the country- men of Washington will not be found wanting. The Second Continental Congress met at Phila- delphia in May, 1775. The battle of Lexington had been fought on the 19th of the previous month. Ed- mund Burke three weeks earlier had made his great speech in the British Parliament urging conciliation towards America. The British were in possession of Boston, and an army of Americans, small but reso- lute band, had gathered about Boston. The army 290 GEORGE WASHINGTON must liaye a commander-in-cbief. On the fifteenth of June, just two days before the battle of Bunker Hilly Washington was unanimously chosen by Con- gress as the commander-in-chief of the army. He accepted the appointment with both modesty and reluctance — ^modesty because as he said "he thought himself with the utmost sincerity unequal to the command he was honored with" ; reluctance because "he felt the full force of the sacrifices of ease and happiness he was making, and the new difficulties he was ineyitably to encounter." I have not taken pains to examine into the mo- tives of Congress in making George Washington com- mander-in-chief. But I suspect that Congress was quite as much influenced by the desire to commit Virginia heartily and finally to the cause as it was by its estimate of Washington's military genius. In- deed, he had up to this time, so far as I remember, in all his military experience, never won a battle, and had simply come out of one defeat after another without disgrace. It is sometimes almost as bad to be commanded by an officer who is uniformly un- lucky as to be commanded by one who is incapable. And Washington certainly had been unlucky in his military experience. But he knew something of war ; he had commanded soldiers in battle; best of all he was a prominent and highly honored citizen of Vir- ginia. The war at the moment was in New England. The British government was doing all in its power to pacify the other provinces, while subduing Massa- chusetts. The appointment of Washington made it sure that Virginia would stand by Massachusetts, that South and North would fight against England as the common foe. GEORGE WASHINGTON 291 Bnt Congress builded better than they knew even, when they chose George Washington commander-in^ chief. Tlie Revolutionary war through its long and weary seven or eight years, never brought to light a soldier who, all things considered, was as fit for the command as Washington. Arnold was brave but he became a traitor. Putnam was a good fighter but Ignorant and narrow. Gates was lucky, but con- ceited and weak. Lee had his good points, but he was jealous and unreasonable. The man who comes the nearest jyerhaps of any in ability as shown by his career is the Rhode Island blacksmith and Quaker preacher, Nathaniel Greene. But while General Greene did nobly and deserved the high praise of Washington and the thanks of Ck)ngress, both of which he received, it may well be doubted whether he could have filled Washington's place as command- er-in-chief successfully, while there can be no doubt at all as to his inability to render the distinguished services which Washington rendered after the war, and which, while they were no part of his duties as commander-in-chief, resulted from the reputation he had gained and the confidence he had inspired in the people diiring his service as commander. Un- doubtedly Washington was the one man who was fitted to conduct the Revolutionary war to a success- ful conclusion, just as Lincoln seems to have been the one man fitted to lead us to victory and union in our great Civil War. Washington was not probably a great general as the victor at Marengo was a great general. But Napoleon, if he won at Marengo, finally had his Waterloo. If Washington did not win at any Ma- rengo, it is also true that he never had a Waterloo. 292 GEORGE WASHINGTON He planned wisely. He waited. He wearied the «nemy out. He never risked his country's future irremediably on a single battle. He was not in the ordinary sense a brilliant general, but his long war closed with Yorktown and it was the British army under Cornwallis which surrendered to Washington. ^^It was the virtual termination of the war, the crown- ing act of a vast series of military operations planned and perfected by the genius of Washington." The closing years of the war were not marked by great military activity, but several events occurred which showed in a striking light the greatness of Washington. In May, 1782 a letter was addressed to him by Colonel Nicola, an officer who had the re- spect of the army, stating the inefficiency of the ex- isting civil government, and suggesting a mixed form of government with a king at its head. This of course meant, though it did not say, with Washington as king. Had he been a Caesar or a Napoleon he would have at least considered the proposition and would have accepted it if feasible. The historian Sparks says: There was unques- tionably at this time and for some time afterwards, a party in the army, neither small in number nor insignificant in character, prepared to second and sustain a measure of this kind, which they conceived necessary to strengthen the civil power, draw out the resources of the country, and establish a durable government. But Washington would not entertain the proposition for a moment. He spoke of it as painful and disagreeable to his mind. He knew the existing evils. He had faith in the republic. "Per- haps he knew that he could not be king if he would. He certainly showed that he would not if he could." GEORGE WASHINGTON 293 But in these closing years of the war the army was uneasy and clamorous for relief. The soldiers had been poorly clothed, poorly fed, and poorly paid. A serious revolt was threatened. Washington's pru- <[ence and wisdom were equal to the emergency. He ermanent value, and who for thirty years was pre- eminently the children's friend. Truly the waves do wash out the footprints on the sand; and very few are the men who "departing leave behind them" for any prolonged period "footprints on the sands of time." Franklin, it is true, is one of these. But it so long since he lived, and so much has happened since then, and so many mighty men have lived, war- riors, statesmen, poets, orators, that I fear many of the young men of our day have never seen his foot- prints at all ; and so to-night, although I do not sup- I)ose that any one of you is "a forlorn and ship- wrecked brother," I wish you to go with me to see the footprints left by Benjamin Franklin, seeing which you "shall take heart again." I said at the outset that I was going to speak of a self-made man, as the phrase is. I am going to do this because I admire what he did, what he was, in spite of his lack of opportunities for prolonged training in schools. Not, I beg you to understand, that I think a self-made man is better than any other — generally speaking I do not admire him so much as I do others, because he is very apt to look upon himself as his own creator and then to rever- ence and worship his creator. I believe thoroughly in regular training in school and college when you can get it. When you can not get it, then I believe in making the most of yourself that you can by your unaided effort. But I do not believe that the best training for vigorous Christian character is to be found in the freedom and license of the street and the «aloon and in the absence of parental control and 304 BENJAMIN FRANKLIN guidance. The best training for Christian character,, the surest training, the one you can rely on in the great majority of cases, is the Christian home, the Sunday School, the Church. Now and then some one comes into the work of Christ who has not had the influence of these institutions about him. But he is no better Christian because he never had early and regular Christian training, while the great multi- tude who never had this early and regular Christian training never become Christians at all. So it i» with mental culture. Those who never get it in the schools and in the colleges, seldom get it at all. Now and then one appears as an exception and we gladly^ hail him as an example for others who are in like circumstances; but what we commend in him is not that he did not pursue his studies regularly in the schools, but that, not being able to do that, he has still made himself capable of great service to the world. What man has done, man can do. What man without the opportunities of scholastic training has done, other men in like situation may do. And be- cause I do not suppose that the young men before me will ever have much more opportunity to go to* school, nor that hereafter I shall meet them as stu* dents, I put before them to-night the example of a man unsurpassed in practical wisdom and excelled by few in the services rendered by him to his country, yet a man who at your age was probably in a less com- fortable condition tlian yours, and had a less hopeful outlook than yours. Benjamin Franklin was the son of a poor man who had seventeen children, of whom Benjamin was the fifteenth in age. To be born into such a family seems like foreordained poverty. Brothers and sis- BENJAMIN FRANKLIN 30& ters are very good things to have, but it would seem as if it were possible to have too many of them for comfort, and that the limit of comfort would be reached sometime before there were seventeen chil- dren in the family. His father, Josiah Franklin, emigrated from Northamptonshire, England, to New England about 1685 with his wife and such chil- dren as they then had. This wife died and Josiah married for his second wife, the daughter of the old Nantucket poet, Peter Folger. This lady was ^^a discreet and virtuous woman" and she lived ta a good old age. A letter written by her when she was eighty-four years old to her son Benjamin, then a fast rising man of forty-five in Philadelphia, has been published and shows her to have been in her old age as prudent and provident as need be. Accord- ing to the inscription on the tombstone, which we know can always be relied on, the father was ^'a pious and prudent man," so that Benjamin, who was born January 17, 1706, had one advantage in starting in the world, namely, honest blood. Hi» father was a tallow chandler and soap boiler. His business was not very pleasant; but he managed to keep his family alive with it, till all the boys had been bound out as apprentices to trades except the youngest, Benjamin; and then, as often happens in families, the desire arose to make something better out of this, the youngest son, than it had been pos- sible to make of the others. And so Benjamin was sent to the public school to become a clergyman. He had the promise from his uncle of the shorthand notes of all the sermons he had ever listened to, which Benjamin was to decipher and from which he was to get material for his own future discourses. 306 BENJAMIN FRANKLIN But Providence had other work for him than preach- ing. The boy began his school life at the age of eight and ended it at ten. It was too much for the fa- ther to keep him at school^ and so Benjamin was taken into the tallow chandlery to dip candles and wait on customers. Picture to yourself the little fellow, ten years old, engaged in this occupation as his beginning in life, and tell me whether it is likely that he will ever attain to honor in the world. Is there a newsboy or a bootblack in our city whose prospect is not as good as was that little fellow's, dipping candles? But Benjamin was not the boy to dip candles forever. He wanted, like hosts of other boys, to go to sea, not so much because he had the tastes of a sailor, but as the means of getting away from his unpleasant occupation. But finally something was discovered that suited him. He had a great liking for books, read whatever he could get hold of, and so his father bound him as an apprentice to a brother who was a printer. Now, many people suppose because some boys who have become printers, have also become famous as writers, and because printers more than anybody else may properly be called "men of letters," that there is some special connection between the work of a printer and literary culture. But printing, setting type, may be made as mechanical and unintellectual and uninspiring an occupation as anything else; and a man may set type without getting any more real knowledge from the copy which he sets up than if he were putting together letters in an unmeaning form. I have known men to set type in this purely mechanical way with no real comprehension of or thought about what they were composing. It is not, you see, the oc- BENJAMIN FRANKLIN 307 cupation merely which makes the difference in men's careers. It is the men themselves. Benjamin Frank- lin was one of those who knew what he was compos- ing when he was setting tyi)e. Horace Greeley was another. But there are multitudes of the other kind who get no more real culture from being printers than they would from being brick-layers. But Franklin, the printer, was no such workman. He thought^ and therefore he was interested in thought. Obliged to work for his daily bread, he yet got out of his life a good deal more than his bread; for in all his work he comprehended the thoughts which other men had written for him to print and he not only gained the knowledge which was thus placed within his reach, but, by thinking upon what he read^ he was inspired to think for himself and at last to write. An apprentice boy, he comes across the Spec- tat or ^ the immortal work of Joseph Addison and kindred literary spirits, and he reads this work with avidity. But he is not content to understand and admire. He sees in this work a perfection of form^ an elegance of style, that he has nowhere else found ; and he determines to be able to write somewhat as this elegant author writes. And so he takes notes of the ideas, and then after he had forgotten the form of the original he did his best to reproduce it, thus laboriously trying to write like Addison. He prob- ably could not then have found a better master of literature to copy, and doubtless the clear, simple^ luminous style of Franklin owes its origin, in part at least, to the faithful study and earnest imitation^ by the printer's apprentice, of the style of Addison. And yet it is said that the paper on which he was em- ployed at this time was spicy, which is about the same 308 BENJAMIN FRANKLIN thing as to say now of a paper that it is slangy. Ben- jamin Franklin might have been content to write slang for a paper that published slang, but he chose rather to study and imitate that prince of English es- isayists ; and so, instead of being nobody but a demor- alizing reporter and writer for a low-toned newspaper, he gained a style of writing, a felicity and nobility of speech, which fitted him to be the most eminent diplomatist of his country abroad, and the most natu- ral and effective exponent of practical wisdom for the people at home. It is an old and wise saying, gentlemen, "in time of peace, prepare for war." Is it any less fitting to say: "in youth, prepare for man- hood"; "in manhood, prepare for old age?" Lay foundation for what you expect to build. If your life structure is to be as flimsy as an Arab's tent, you need no great foundation, and you will find out how utterly worthless is your tent. If you mean to build anything substantial in either mind or character you must lay proper foundations. And so Benjamin Franklin, when he was nothing but a printer's devil, laid the foundation of a style of writing which would have made him immortal, even if he had done nothing but write. The newspaper on which Franklin was employed was published by his brother to whom Benjamin had been bound as an apprentice. It took some liberties with the powers that were, and in consequence the publisher found himself in trouble and no longer per- mitted to publish a paper. Accordingly he released Benjamin from his indentures as an apprentice and proposed to publish the paper in his name. The scheme did not work well, however. The brother was too imperious to suit the independent spirit of BENJAMIN FRANKLIN 309 the younger man, and, therefore, Benjamin took the first opportunity of withdrawing from the paper and of leaving Boston. He went to New York, but found no employment. He went on further to Phila- >delphia, ^^making his first entrance into the place in which he was afterwards to play so important a part, from a boat which he had assisted in rowing down the Delaware, one memorable Sunday morning, in October, 1723, at the age of seventeen. He was clad in his working dress, soiled by exposures on the way; fatigued, hungry, and almost penniless." It is a familiar picture which was that day presented of young Benjamin Franklin walking along Market Street, with the "three great puflfy rolls of bread in liis arm, passing the door of his future wife, noticed not very favorably by that lady, making the cir- -cuit of the town, sharing those never-to-be-forgotten loaves with a hungry mother and her child, till at last he finds shelter in sleep, in a silent meeting of the Quakers." There is nothing in the outward con- dition of this young man yet to indicate future great- ness. Not one of you here who is not better off in worldly condition than was young Benjamin Frank- lin, sleeping off his weariness that Sunday morning iQ Philadelphia, in a Quaker Meeting House, without an acquaintance in the city and without anything to do and almost nothing on which to live. But he at once sought employment and after a fadhion found it. He was thrown into the company of all sorts of people, from the most pronounced vagabonds to the Toyal governors of provinces. One of the latter, an enthusiast without wisdom, a man whose vision was telescopic and not microscopic, and who therefore «aw things clearly at a distance, but could see noth- 310 BENJAMIN FRANKLIN ing when things were near enough to be handled and actually dealt with, proposed to Franklin to start a paper of his own, promising necessary financial help ; the result of which was that Franklin, led by the promises of this scatter-brained statesman, found himself in Ix)ndon, on a fooFs errand, and was driven to his trade there in order to support himself. Here he had a shabby companion as a crony, and I am sorry to say that the two lived together in a manner by no means creditable to them, these days in London being the black days of Franklin's life. On his return to Pennsylvania in 1726, he turned over a new leaf. He was now only 20 years old; but he had seen a great deal of the world ; had encountered all sorts of queer people; had acquired a clear and vigorous style of writing, and had learned by experience the difference between the path trodden by the wise man and that trodden by the fool, and had fully made up his mind that the former was to be preferred. I can hardly notice the various steps of his sub- sequent progress; to dwell upon them is impossible. On his return to Philadelphia from his foolish ex- pedition to London, he first engaged in mercantile business with a friend, but the friend dying soon after, Franklin returned to his composing stick and case as a printer. He soon established a reputation for wisdom which made him influential with his asso- ciates. One of his first steps was to organize the Junto, an association of young men for self-culture and mutual help; out of this Junto ultimately came the great Philadelphia Library, "the mother of all the North American subscription libraries." This Junto lasted forty years and became the basis of the American Philosophical Society, that is, an organiza- BENJAMIN FRANKLIN 311 tion by a few intelligent clerks and mechanics foi self-improvement and inquiry becomes in time the leading society of the country in investigating sci- entific truth. Meanwhile Franklin becomes an em- ployer, takes a partner both in business and matri- mony, starts a newspaper, and three years later in 1732, he being then only twenty-six years old, begins the publication of his famous Poor Richard/s Al- manac, a work which appeared annually for twenty- five years, and contained a large amount of practical worldly wisdom condensed and epigrammatic and inferior in value and quantity only to the Proverbs of Solomon, which wisdom was afterward collected and published in a famous tract called the Way to Wealth. It was worldly in its tone as the science of wealth always is. But it was not ungenerous or mean. It was careful, economical, wise. I can not possibly pack so much wisdom in this lecture in any other way as by quoting some of these maxims of Poor Richard. I want you to think of them, not merely hear them. God helps them that help themselves. Sloth, like rust, consumes faster than labor wears, while the used key is always bright. What we call time enough always proves little enough. He that rlseth late may trot all day, and shall scarce overtake his business at night. Drive thy business, let not that drive thee. Early to bed and early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise. There are no gains without pains ; then help hand^ for I have no lands. He that hath a trade, hath an estate. 312 BENJAMIN FRANKLIN At the workingman's house, hanger looks in but dares not enter. Plow deep while sluggards sleep, and you shall have com to sell and to keep. One to-day is worth two to-morrows. Handle your tools without mittens; the cat in gloves catches no mice. Little strokes fell gretA oaks. Three removes are as bad as a fire. Keep thy shop and thy shop will keep thee. If you would have your business done, go ; if not, send. He that by the plough would thrive. Himself must either hold or drive. The eye of the master will do more work than both his hands. If you would have a faithful servant and one that you like, serve yourself. Many a little makes a mickle. Beware of little expenses. A small leak will sink a great ship. Fools make feasts and wise men eat them. Buy what thou hast no need of, and ere long thou Shalt sell thy necessaries. Always taking out of the meal tub and never pu^ ting in soon comes to the bottom. If you would know the value of money, go and try to borrow some, for he that goes a borrowing goes a sorrowing. Vessels large may venture more, But little boats should keep near shore. Lying rides upon debt's back. The second vice is lying ; the first is running in debt. It is hard for an emply bag to stand upright BENJAMIN FRANKLIN 313 A little neglect may breed great mischief; for want of a nail a shoe was lost, and for want of a shoe the horse was lost, and for want of a horse the rider was lost, being overtaken and slain by the enemy; all for want of a little care about a horse-shoe naiL Those have a short Lent who owe money at Easter. For age and want save while you may, No morning snn lasts a whole day. It is easier to build ttvo chimneys than to keep one in fuel. Experience keeps a dear school, but fools will learn in no other. But he did too much for us to dwell upon his wise sayings. In 1736 he was chosen clerk of the General Assembly, the following year deputy postmaster in Philadelphia. He has a hand in everything useful in Philadelphia. He sets on foot measures for erect- ing a building for Whitefield to preach in, he starts fire companies, he edits and publishes books, he in- vents his famous Franklin stove, draws up a pro- posal for establishing an academy which ultimately became the University of Pennsylvania, projected and established the American Philosophical Society, assisted in founding the Pennsylvania Hospital. You see he is inventive, has his eyes open, sees things to be done, and is ready to help do them. He is not standing around in a helpless way for somebody to suggest something for him to do or help him to do something. This boy, who left school at the age of ten and went to dipping tallow candles, is already, not yet thirty years old, the wisest and most in- fluential and, what is more, the most useful man in Philadelphia. How has this come about? Not cer- tainly by Franklin's waiting like Mr. Micawber for 314 BENJAMIN FRANKLIN ^'something to turn up/' but by his making the most of his opportunities, by his getting ready to do some- thing before the call to do something came, and when he did not know whether such a call would ever come. As Hamlet says: "The readiness is all." It is as applicable to this life as it is to the next. Be ye also ready, for in such an hour as ye think not, not only will the Son of man come, but the oppor- tunity to render great service will come. Once in five centuries, perhaps, there is occasion for a Lin- coln and a Grant But, though men wait five cen-> turies for the occasion to come and generation after generation passes away without the sight, yet the Lincoln and the Grant must be ready when the oc- casion does come, and they are ready. And so Frank- lin, not knowing what the unrolled scroll of time was to reveal, prepared himself and was ready. When the colonies find themselves in trouble with the mother country, Franklin is the first to suggest the idea of Union as a means of safety. Other men might speak more eloquently, but no man brought to the councils greater wisdom. You all know something about his philosophical studies. At least you have all heard of his experi- ment with the kite during the thunder storm, and his discovery of the identity of electricity and lightning. He made his discoveries with the simplest kind of apparatus, that practical wisdom which helped him in other things aiding him even in scientific research. As the great English man of science. Sir Humphry Davy, said of him, "A singular felicity of induction guided all his researches, and by very small means he established very grand truths. The style and manner of his publication on electricity are almost BENJAMIN FRANKLIN 315 as worthy of admiration as the doctrine it contains." In 1756 he was made a Fellow of the Boyal So- ciety of London, and that, too, contrary to all prece- dent, while he was in America. We have seen Franklin as the printer, as the scientist; henceforth we must look at him as the statesman. As a statesman Franklin rendered the very highest services first to the mother country and then to America. In 1757 he went to London as the agent of the province of Pennsylvania to settle dis- putes that had arisen between the province and the heirs of its founder, the celebrated William Penn. Difficult as was his task, he completed it successfully in three years. While in England, he published a work entitled The Interests of Great Britain Consid- ered^ w^hich attracted great attention, and it has been said on good authority "that the expedition against Canada and its consequences in the victory of Wolfe at Quebec, and the conquest of that country may be chiefly ascribed to Franklin." The great University of Oxford, England, now honored him with the de- gree of Doctor of Laws. And now as British op- pression began to chafe the minds of Americans, Franklin is made the agent in England, not only of Pennsylvania, but of New Jersey, Massachusetts, and Georgia, all these colonies seeing that "no more astute counsellor could be sent to cope with the diplomacy of the Old World." He appeared before Parliament itself and, without special preparation, he "answers fully and shrewdly all questions pro- posed.'- "There is enough wisdom in his responses to save an empire if the British representatives had ears to hear." Six years later he skillfully unveiled the duplicity of the royal governor and lieutenant- 316 BENJAMIN FRANKLIN governor of Massachusetts, showing that, while pre- tending to favor the people of the colonies, they were actually writing to England in favor of employing armed force to subdue the Americans. The effect upon Massachusetts and the other colonies was tre- mendous. For his part in this matter Franklin was grossly abused before the Privy Council by Wedde- burn, the king's solicitor, while the privy counsellors could not suppress their glee and exultation. Frank- lin stood during the whole scene "like a rock." "He was dressed in a suit of Manchester velvet." It is said he purposely wore the same dress, when, with his fellow commissioners at Paris, he signed the Treaty of 1783, by which England acknowledged the independence of the United States, and an end was put to the meddling of privy counsellors with the affairs of America. For ten years Franklin remained in England, seeking to promote the interests of the colonies. He kept his finger, however, on the pulse of the British nation, and when at last he discovered that delirium was certain, he, having no desire to be a prisoner in the Tower, in good time departed for America. While he was on the Atlantic the battle of Lexing- ton was fought, and the possibility of a peaceful settlement of the difficulties between the mother country and the colonies was at an end. Franklin, on arriving home, was immediately elected a mem- ber of the Second Continental Congress. He drafted Articlei3 of Confederation, by which all the colonies might have some sort of unity of government, he was appointed postmaster general, he visited the camp of Washington at Cambridge to counsel and encour- age, he went to Canada to negotiate insurrection, and BENJAMIN FRANKLIN 317 on that memorable 4th of July, 1776, at the age of seventy, he put his name to the Declaration of In- dependence. "We must be unanimous," said John Hancock, of Massachusetts, the president of the Ck)n- gress; "there must be no pulling different ways: we must all hang together." "Yes," answered the wise and witty Franklin, "we must indeed all hang to- gether, or most assuredly we shall all hang separate- ly." Surely now, having filled out the three score years and ten of life allotted to man, the aged phi- losopher and statesman may be permitted to spend in leisure whatever remnant of days may be left to him by Providence. But, no, we find him next presiding over a convention to frame a state constitution for Pennsylvania; next we find him traveling to Staten Island to have an interview with Lord Howe, the Brit- ish commander, and sleeping in the same bed with John Adams and arguing that statesman to sleep with "a curtain dissertation on opening the window for ventilation." A month later he is on his way to Paris, accompanied by his two grandsons, on the most important business of his life, a commissioner to negotiate a treaty and alliance with the French mon- arch. Upon the success of his efforts in this capacity depends, so far as human foresight can determine, the independence of his country. For a full view of the diplomatic skill and wisdom displayed by Frank- lin in these negotiations, by which he secured an alliance with France and brought the French army and navy to the support of the struggling colonists in their efforts for independence, I must refer you to that prince of American historians, George Ban- croft, in whose great work you will find the highest 'eulogiums pronounced upon the services of Frank- 318 BENJAMIN FRANKLIN lin ; and for a view of Franklin's associates in France and of his social position there, I must refer you to the March number of the Century Magazine the pres- ent year. Enough for our purpose now that he was successful. France became our ally. Independence was secured. Turgot, the eminent French statesman, wrote of him, in Latin, ^^Eripuit coelo fulmen, seep- trumque tyrannis/^ "He snatched the lightning from heaven, and the sceptre from tyrants." He was in- troduced to the king and court at Versailles, and thus realized the proverb of Solomon : "Seest thou a man diligent in his business? he shall stand before kings; he shall not stand before mean men." He had an in- terview with' Voltaire and was publicly embraced by him at the Academy of Science while the enthusiastic Frenchmen present cried out, "How charming it is to see Solon and Sophocles embrace," giving to Frank- lin the higher place in wisdom. In a month from that scene Voltaire was dead. Franklin lived ten years longer, busy to the last. He signed the treaty of peace by which England acknowledged the independ- ence of his country. He then spent a few days in England where he might now go in safety and honor. Then he returned to America, was received with great demonstrations of resi)ect and honor. He was three years president of Pennsylvania, and, when a conven- tion assembled to frame a constitution for the whole country, a convention that did frame the Constitu- tion under which we live, Franklin was there as a member, to give his wise counsel in the great work. It was he who, on the last day of the convention, Monday, September 17th, 1787, made the motion to sign the instrument. He supported the motion with a written speech, which, as he was too infirm to stand BENJAMIN FRANKLIN 319 and deliver it, was read by one of his colleagues. Most men under such circumstances would have been in bed with the doctors around them. But Franklin kept up to the last. And only when his work was really finished, a work whose magnitude and gran^ deur a moment's backward glance at what has been said to-night, will reveal, did he retire to his home in Market Street, Philadelphia, to await that final summons which none of us can escape. He sujffered much, but his homely wisdom and love of anecdote kept him company to the last. He died about eleven o'clock at night, April 17, 1790 in the eighty-fifth year of his age. "He had become the property of the nation and the world" ; and both the nation and the world have been proud to assert their right to a share in his fame. He was not especially a religious man, but the virtues he exhibited are virtues without which anything that passes for religion is of very little val- ue. He accomplished what he did by the most inde- fatigable industry, by a constant looking ahead and preparation for what was coming, by temperance, by honesty, by study, by self-denial, by having his eyes open so as to take in all that experience might bring to him, by interest in his fellowmen, by charity, by love unfeigned, by doing to others as he would that they should do to him. But so far as his worldly success is concerned, the key to it all is that he im- proved his time and made the most of his opportuni- ties. Is not the lesson a plain one? Does it need to be enforced? As the grave closes over the remains of such a man as Franklin, you may ask "what will he be in the life to come?" a question which we can not an- swer. You may ask and you do ask "what has he 320 BENJAMIN FRANKLIN done?" a question which the study of his life clearly answers. But you do not ask, you would never think of asking, "how much money did he leave?" So much the better is it to be and to do than merely to get and to have. So much more surely do our act» influence and affect the world than do the possessions which we gather and leave. THREE GREAT PRESIDENTS ♦ Till our fathers established a republic, the world's theory of government had been almost entirely a mo- narchical theory. Kings ruled, and, having once been established as kings, their children and children's chil- dren ruled after them. Our country established in 1788 the principle of an elective executive. And when one thinks of the number of people in this country, the variety of races, the multitude of varying opin- ions, the range of character, and the intricate com- plexities of politics with all the machines and com- bines within the political parties, it would seem improbable that the choice of the nation for president would very often be a wise one. But as a fact that choice has very seldom been unwise. Indeed I do not know, as events have happened, that it has ever been unwise. The presidential election of 1844 was a most im- portant one when Henry Clay was the candidate of the Whigs and James K. Polk, the candidate of the Democrats. Clay was the idol of the Whigs; Polk was comparatively unknown. I was a small boy and I remember very well that when the returns of the election in the state of New York came slowly in, and it became apparent that Clay had lost the state and thus had lost his election, I shed tears ^Delivered at the University of Minnesota, February 12th, 1909. 322 THREE GREAT PRESIDENTS over the result which seemed likely to be so disas- trous to the country. But the result was the annexa- tion of Texas, the Mexican war, the acquisition of an immense area of territory, and the extension of our boundaries to the Pacific from Oregon to South- em California. The process by which we secured this expansion was undoubtedly somewhat shady, but the result was unquestionably most favorable to our nation's growth and power. In the presidential cam- paign Mr. Polk was laughed at by the Whigs who sang, ^'Ha! ha! ha! ^uch a nominee, as James K. Polk of Tennessee," but Mr. Polk won. He proved to be a man of no mean intellectual power, and he carried out very vigorously the .policy of his party, which at that time was very emphatically a policy of expansion. California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas were added to our territory. If Mr. Clay had been elected, Texas would not have been annexed at that time certainly, and perhaps not at any time. There would have been no Mexican war. There would have been no territory added over which the nation must contend in the interest of slavery or freedom. There would probably have been no Civil war and no emancipation of the slaves. We can say to our Southern brethren what Joseph said to his brethren in Egypt. "But as for you, ye thought evil against me, but God meant it unto good, to bring to pass as it is this day." From George Washington to James Buchanan we have a list of presidents far surpassing in charac- ter and ability any line of kings that I have any knowledge of. Most of them were statesmen and scholars, and the few who were not scholars made up for their deficiency by strong common sense, great THREE GREAT PRESIDENTS 323 vigor of administration, and unflinching honesty of purpose. During the first forty years of our existence as a nation the states of Virginia and Massachusetts furnished all the presidents. Virginia furnished four, all of whom served eight years. Massachusetts furnished two, both of whom served four years. These six presidents all belonged to the colonial aris- tocracy, being of the best families and trained under the best influences of British and American life. In 1828 Andrew Jackson was elected — a westerner as he was called in those days, Tennessee, his home state, being then on our western border. Jackson was a man of little culture, but of great native strength. He was unlike any of his predecessors. Of all our presidents he was most like Roosevelt. They differed as much as possible in social stand- ing, culture, and taste, but they were alike in three vital points, that both of them knew positively what ought to be done and were determined that what ought to be done should be done; and both were the idol of the common people; and both had bitter ene- mies among the jjeople who were not common. Af- ter Jackson came Van Buren, a representative of the Dutch aristocracy of New York. Then came General Harrison, a western man of the people, who died after one month's service, and John Tyler, the vice-president, a Virginian of the Virginian aristoc- racy, served three years and eleven months. In 1844 James K. Polk of Tennessee was elected, a western man but with much more culture than Jack- son had. In 1848 bluff old Zachary Taylor, a rep- resentative of the army rather than of any section, a Southerner by birth, an American in feeling, was 324 THREE GREAT PRESIDENTS elected, but died before the completion of his term of office, and Vice-President Millard Fillmore, a New York gentleman, succeeded him. In 1852 Franklin Pierce, a Bowdoin College graduate and friend of Nathaniel Hawthorne, was elected. He had served in the Mexican war, to which fact he owed his nomi- nation. His home was in New Hampshire and he was the third and last president from New England. In 1856, when the clouds were gathering out of which ultimately came the downpour of the Civil War, James Buchanan, a conservative old gentleman of the aristocratic type, a Pennsylvanian, was elected and served his full four years, in the latter part of which the thunder of the coming storm was distinctly heard. The old dynasty ended with James Buchanan. A new dynasty was begun with Abraham Lincoln and is represented to-day by Theodore Roosevelt; and between the two are Andrew Johnson, Ulysses S. Grant, B. B. Hayes, James A. Garfield, Chester A. Arthur, Grover Cleveland, Benjamin Harrison, and William McKinley ; and I am sure none of us would think for a moment that the men of the later dy- nasty are inferior in intellect, scholarship, character, or statesmanship to those of the earlier period. Al- most every one of these later men is justly to be honored for conspicuous ability or for eminent serv- ice to the republic. Washington, Jefferson, John Quincy Adams, Jackson, Benjamin Harrison, and McKinley, of none of whom shall I speak particularly to-day, were all men either of distinguished ability or of great achieve- ments, and aU in different ways greatly honored the country which they served. THREE GREAT PRESIDENTS 325 I wish, however, to speak particularly to-day of three others, whom I shall characterize as three great presidents, whose character and life I hope may make an impression on your minds and whose example may be an inspiration to the highest service as citi- zens. The three taken together illustrate most hap- pily the possibilities of great achievement open to every American and emphasize most strongly the fact that success does not depend on birth, wealth, or anything else except personal ability, earnestness, and energy. I am glad that these three presidents did not all belong to the same political party, and, therefore, in speaking of them I can do justice to them without any partisan feeling, while at the same time all three of these presidents have passed beyond the line of parties into the larger and nobler field of patriot- ism, and all of them have become so identified with enthusiasm for the good of the country rather than for the triumph of party, that the admiration felt for them is almost as great among the party opposed to them as among their special political followers. As a patriot is a nobler character that a politician, these three men are fairly entitled to the distinction I would give them to-day in speaking of them as Three Great Presidents. The first of these is Qrover Cleveland. Grover Cleveland was the son of a Presbyterian minister and he had many of the personal traits of the old Puritans. In all his public career he never hesitated to do what he thought was right. As mayor of Buffalo he saved the city a million dollars in the first six months of his official life, by vetoing ex- travagant and improper measures. As governor of 326 THREE GREAT PRESIDENTS New York he put his veto on many improper acts of the legislature, and as president he vetoed more acts of Ck)ngress than any other president and I have never learned that the country was the worse therefor. When the dispute with England over the Venezuela boundary arose. President Cleveland de- fined the Monroe Doctrine in such vigorous terms as to astonish both England and the United States. The result was the appointment of an Arbitration Commission and a subsequent peaceful settlement of the question. So, too, when the strike in Chicago had assumed almost the proportions of a revolution and there was danger of an immense destruction of property and of life, President Cleveland did not hesitate a moment as to his duty, but sent at once the Federal troops to the scene of trouble and the disturbance was quelled. Mr. Cleveland has but recently passed away, and the nation has most sincerely mourned his loss. I think that the faith of the people in his integrity was practically unlimited and his appointment as one of the committee to hold the stock of the Equi- table Insurance Company in New York at a crisis in our financial affairs restored the confidence of the policy holders that if anything were still left, it would now be safe. It was delightful to see a man of such indom- itable will and established beliefs, who had passed through a very stormy political career, who had the honor of being the only president of his party elected within the last half century and the further honor of being twice elected, though not for a continuous term, who was thoroughly democratic and yet as hostile to everything that smacks of fanaticism or THREE GREAT PRESIDENTS 327 that would interfere with vested rights, as any old Federalist ever was — it was delightful to see him officiating as trustee of Princeton College, and giving his time to the promotion of the college interests, and speaking to the students in addresses that would do honor to Isaiah or Jeremiah or any other of the old prophets, and yet all the time having one hand on the financial interests in New York City, and the other on his fishing tackle, waiting for the treasures of the sea. He has gone to his reward. But he will find a place in history as one of our great presidents, and he will be honored by the thoughtful people of this country as a statesman of great breadth of view, a partisan who loved country better than party, and as an executive true to his convictions and fear- less in the discharge of duty. The second great president of whom I shall speak is Theodore Roosevelt. He was born amid compara- tive affluence and had the best opportunities for securing the highest education and for fitting him- self for the largest public duties. It is to his endur- ing credit that he has made the most of his oppor- tunities, has not been content to live in comfort and do nothing and be nothing, but by faithful devotion to duty, has become the soldier, the scholar, the writer, and the statesman that he is. He graduated at Har- vard University in 1880, two years after William H. Taft had graduated at Yale. He entered politics as a champion of civil service reform. He introduced into the New York legislature the first civil serv- ice bill passed by the legislature, in 1883. In 1889 he was made by President Harrison a member of the United States Civil Service Commission, and held the position six years. At the beginning of his term -22 328 THREE GREAT PRESIDENTS of service 14,000 employes of the government held their position under civil service rules. At the end of his term of service, 40,000 employes so held their position. Roosevelt was afterguards made president of the New York Board of Police Commissioners and dis- tinguished himself by bravely doing the unpopular thing, namely, enforcing the laws in reference to the sale of liquor. Of his career as assistant sec- retary of the navy under McKinley, his services as a soldier in Cuba under General Leonard Wood, his election to the office of governor of the state of New York, his nomination as vice-president on the ticket with McKinley in 1900 — a nomination not sought nor desired but forced upon him — his election, the sad death of McKinley and the entrance of Roose- velt on his career as president, September 14th, 1901, I need not speak. He has been president now a little more than seven years, elected at the last election by an unprecedented majority. You know him and his career as president as well as I do. No matter to what party you belong, you believe in Roosevelt and are proud of him and glad that he is to-day president. When the great coal strike threatened to produce a famine in coal, and the suffering coun- try appealed to the president as its last hope, he took hold of the matter, though he said, "This I suppose ends me." But it did not. His wise coun- sel and courageous action resulted in settling the trouble; and when it was settled I am sure that neither the coal barons nor the miners had less re- spect than before for President Roosevelt, while in the hearts of the American people he had gained a much larger place than he held before. They knew THREE GREAT PRESIDENTS 329 his courage and his fairness and they loved him. When he announced his great principle of giving every man a square deal, he struck a chord to which every honest American heart responds and pointed the way for the just settlement of every question. Is it a corporation, is it a railroad, is it a shipper, is it a private citizen, is it capital, is it labor — ^a square deal for all is the President's motto and what- ever may be the details of his plans, everybody knows that a square deal for all will be the underlying prin- ciple. President Boosevelt is so earnest, so industrious, and so tireless, that the great measures which he advocates and the great interests which he serves, and the great questions of national and international welfare which he solves, pass before us with almost kaleidoscopic rapidity of change, and we feel, as perhaps never before, that the nation under his guid* ance is at the present time leading a very strenuous life. But in and through it all, the people know him as their champion and friend, and they believe that though he, like all other men, may make mis- takes, he will never betray the interests of the people, and would never betray them though all the king- doms of the world, including Standard Oil, Steel Trust, Beef Combine, and all the other monopolies should be offered to him as his reward for so doing. A recent article in one of our journals informs us that the President once replied to some compli- ment for his successful career in this wise : "It has always seemed to me that in life there are two ways of achieving success, or for that mat- ter, of achieving what is commonly called greatness. One is to do that which can only be done by the 330 THREE GREAT PRESIDENTS man of exceptional and extraordinary abilities. Of course this means that only one man can do it, and it is a very rare kind of success or of greatness. The other is to do that which many men could do, but which, as a matter of fact, none of them actually does. This is the ordinary kind of greatness. Nobody but one of the world's rare geniuses could have written the Gettysburg speech or the Second Inaugural, or met as Lincoln met the awful crisis of the Civil War. But most of us can do the ordinary things which, however, most of us do not do. Any hardy, healthy man, fond of outdoor life, but not in the least an athlete, could lead the life I have led if he chose, and by ^chooaing' I of course mean choosing to exercise the requisite industry, judgment, and fore- sight, none of a very marked type." That is Boosevelt's idea of what a man — ^any man — ^may be physically. We may admire it; we may admire the hunter, the naturalist, the soldier — ^all full of physical vigor, but the glory of the Presi- dent is not really in these mere accessories so to speak, but in his hearty sympathy with the people — not any one class of people exclusively — ^and in his fearless devotion to the welfare of the country and in his unswerving loyalty to right always and everywhere. We all know how strenuously President Roose- velt has urged Congress to do justice to Cuba and how at last justice has been done. We all know how he has sought to establish just rates of transportation and how difficult the problem is to solve. We all know how he has done what he could to regulate the Beef Combine, and I think we all begin to realize that combinations of capital THREE GREAT PRESIDENTS 331 BO gigantic as the Oil and Beef Combines are hard to control perfectly^ and that, however well disposed a president may be and however earnest he may be to protect the people against the oppression of capi- talistic combinations, he can not do what is needed unless he can have the hearty support of Congress co-operating with him by passing the necessary laws and we all know further that such support the presi- dent does not always have from the United States Senate. Just why the United States Senate should be an obstacle to the president does not at first sight appear. Is it because the senators are men of base clfaracter? Two or three of them have indeed been convicted of crimes and have been kept out of prison only by the law's notorious delays or by death, but we can hardly suppose they are sample senators. Is it because the Senate is so full of rich men and their i^mpathy with combines and trusts and other methods of high finance? Is it because the methods by which these rich men have secured their elec- tion to the Senate are such as to put them in the class of the law breakers from the start and there- fore to insure their perpetual sympathy with other rich law breakers? Is it because there are so many senators who can be made to do whatever rich cor- porations ask, either because they have already re- ceived their reward from these corporations or else they expect to receive their reward; or is it because so many senators are directly or indirectly connected with these corporations, stockholders let in on the ground floor, attorneys who have received big fees in the past, and expect to receive such fees again as soon as it is safe to do so, sons-in-law of the big officials who run the corporations? Why, 332 THREE GREAT PRESIDENTS the ways in which senators can be related to and In- terested in these corporations and trusts and rail- roads and other forms of aggregated capital^ are almost innumerable; and there is no security or safety for the people except in choosing as senator a man of such character and principle as to render it impossible for him to be secretly on the side of law breakers and oppressors of the people^ while seemingly serving the people. Buch a man was the late Orville H. Piatt, of CJonnecticut, who died last year, after a service of nearly thirty years in the Senate. He was a man of republican simplicity, of high character, of lofty ideals, and a true states- man, and when his body was borne to the grave in the countiy tovm of Washington, Connecticut, borne to the grave in the farm wagon drawn by the farm horses, and followed by the vice-president of the United States and a company of senators and other friends on foot, it was a spectacle of olden time simplicity that might well put to blush the ostentatious display at funerals of much less worthy men. Orville H. Piatt, of Connecticut, author of the Piatt amendment by which Cuba and the United States were brought into proper relations, and by which Cuba has been saved from permanent revolu- tion, served his country as a patriotic statesman should serve it, not seeking his own gain but the good of all. O for the day when the people can vote directly in the choice of United States senators! The day will come. God grant it may come soon. Be sure that when it does come, the character of the Senate will be speedily changed. It will no longer be a rich man's club. It will no longer contain senators who THREE GREAT PRESIDENTS 333 represent special interests instead of the people. It will no longer as a whole be a body unwilling to do anything themselves and unwilling that anybody else shall do anything. It will no longer be a body throw- ing every obstacle possible in the way of legislation recommended by a president voicing the wishes of the millions of people, but it will be a body as sen- sitive to public opinion as is the House of Repre- sentatives and nothing more could be asked. But meanwhile, let the states look to it that unworthy senators are not re-elected and that good men are elected instead. If senators have been faithful in the past and can be relied on to do what is right in the future, let them be retained in office, for their power and usefulness will grow the longer they serve. But if senators are not such men, the sooner their places are filled with better men, the sooner the people of the country will get what they are longing for, and what President Roosevelt is trying to give them — a square deal. I need hardly say anything about the great pl&ce in the eyes of the world which President Roosevelt fills by reason of his achievements as the great peace maker. Two mighty powers had been in conflict on sea and land in a war attended by unprecedented loss of life, and the most spectacular naval battle the world has ever known, on the result of which the fate of empires depended. The world had looked on with astonishment at the vigor and power of the successful belligerent and the comparative weakness and incapacity of the less successful one, though the one that at the opening of the war was supposed to be the mightier. Men had been slaughtered by the tens of thousands. Ships had been shattered and 334 THREE GREAT PRESIDENTS sunk that a generation ago would have -been in- vincible. The world sickened of the contest. But neither belligerent would propose a cessation of hos- tilities. And no European power was ready to step in between the warring nations and ask for peace. What neither England nor Germany nor France dared to do, Theodore Boosevelt did. He brought about a conference between the representatives of the warring nations, and when that conference was ready to break up in disagreement, he still by his personal influence at Tokyo and St. Petersburg kept it together until out of what semed hopeless and irreconcilable disagreement, there came at last har- mony and peace, no more bloodshed, no more wid- owed or childless women in Japan and Bussia, no more dead or wounded and dying soldiers or sailors, but peace; and from every quarter of the globe, from emperors and kings and poi>e and people, there came one mighty chorus of praise and joy, and thanks to the brave and wise man who, as president of the United States, had blessed the world by securing peace, and had at the same time lifted our country to a higher place in the honor and admiration of the world than that which had been secured for us by Dewey and his associate heroes in the Spanish war. So that to-day, the big club is wreathed round with olive leaves of peace, and our nation's attitude be- fore the world is, more than ever before, "With mal- ice towards none and charity for all." "Blessed are the peacemakers for they shall be called the chil- dren of God." And in this same spirit of culti- vating peace and good ^ill the president made his visit to the South and especially to fever-stricken New Orleans. No wish is dearer to his heart than THREE GREAT PRESIDENTS 335 that the wounds made by our Civil War may be healed, and North and Sonth become one again in patriotic devotion to our common country. As show- ing what he may have accomplished in this respect, I quote an incident as I find it reported in a New York paper. "Mrs. T. J. ("Stonewall") Jackson, to whom the President paid his respects in Charlotte, N. C, has expressed her appreciation of the com- pliment. After voicing her own pleasure, she says: "My faithful old cook was perhaps the most elated person in the parlor. She told me afterward that ^We was the bontonest folks in town, as nobody else had the President and his wife in their houses.' May His Excellency live long to be a blessing and a powerful great good to this grand country of ours." That from the widow of Stonewall Jackson is de- lightful. I can not attempt to enumerate the^ other measures of importance which President Roosevelt has suggested and urged. He called a convention of all the governors of the states to meet at the White House, to devise means for the conservation of our natural resources. It was a memorable con- vention and its proceedings touched high water mark when Roosevelt stepped to the front and said : "Gen- tlemen, I want you to understand what I am trying to do. I am trying to make it impossible that there should be any twilight zone between the national and state governments, so that no corporation or trust can exist without being resiponsible to one or the other." The convention cheered him with wild en- thusiasm. President Roosevelt has done his best to control and regulate the corporations, to abolish abuses by which the great corporations were able to crush their more feeble competitors, and for this pur- 336 THREE GREAT PRESIDENTS pose lie has set in operation the legal machinery of the country without stint^ with the result that many abuses have ceased, and the need of further legisla- tion has been made to appear. It is for Congress to see that his wise recommendations are carried out. He has done his best to secure a square deal for every one. I might enumerate many other measures urged by the President — irrigation, waterways, civil service applied to the census taking, and others al- most without limit. Even in these closing days of his official life, he is earnestly striving to keep Cali- fornia from insulting Japan, and is doing his best to add to the comfort and happiness of the farmers of our country. It has been a dull week in these last seven years when President Roosevelt did not do something or say something to make the American people sit up and think. And now ^ith a full sense of the greatness of our President and of the work he has accomplished, let me, in closing, pay a just tribute to the first mar- tyr president — the only real martyr president — ^Abra- ham Lincoln, the third of the great presidents of whom I proposed to speak. Abraham Lincoln was born in a Kentucky cabin, one hundred years ago to-day, of Virginia parents, and grew up in poverty, with little opportunity for gaining an education, a poor white, motherless at the age of nine, with only a totally illiterate father to care for him. Yet he became president of our country in the very crisis of our nation's life. Of education in school he had almost none. But he read and studied by himself, what is more he thought, so that all knowledge that came within his reach was assimilated and made his own. The humble pur- THREE GREAT PRESIDENTS 337 suits in which he spent the earlier years of his man- hood were made to contribute to his intellectual development so that he was constantly preparing for something higher. He went as a boatman to New Orleans, and caught there a view of slavery at its worst which he never forgot and whose influence he never ceased to feel. But little did he know for what he was fitting himself or in what a terrible and sub- lime contest he was to lead the people to freedom and perpetual Union. He was more than forty years old before events occurred which really roused him to take an interested part in the great battle for justice and humanity. The year 1850 was the period of compromises when statesmen were busy in Washington devising methods by which the country might safely continue half slave and half free. Clay was exerting all his mar- velous eloquence and powers of persuasion in favor of his Omnibus Bill, by which the slavery question should be forever settled; Calhoun was fighting with all his powers of logic for the idea of a confederacy with each state largely independent instead of a nation of which the states were parts ; Webster, still hoping for the presidency, was making seventh of March speeches, thus losing the support of the North without gaining at all the support of the South; Whigs and Democrats alike were doing their best to cover over and suppress the eruptions of the vol- canic slavery agitation, each party vying with the other to show itself the most abject servant of the slave power ; and it seemed as if by universal consent the slavery question had been settled and would no more disturb the unity of the nation. Calhoun, Clay, Webster, the giants of the Senate, died, one 338 THREE GREAT PRESIDENTS after another, between the spring of 1850 and the autumn of 1852. All that their statesmanship had been able to accomplish in the interest of peace, remained undisturbed for two years, when once more the heavens were red and the earth on fire with a new and more terrible eruption of the slavery Vesu- vius. Stephen A. Douglas, of Illinois, urged thereto by Archibald Dixon, of Kentucky, introduced the Kansas-Nebraska bill in 1854 and its passage by Congress and approval by President Pierce swept away every existing barrier between freedom and slavery in the territories. The result was a political uprising in the North, hardly less memorable than that which came seven years later with the attack on Fort Sumter. For the first time in a half century the moral and religious sentiment of the North was aroused, and men who had cared little or nothing for politics during the dreary decades when sub- serviency to the South was the only key to success, and when the radicalism of the Abolitionists defying alike tlie Constitution and the laws, repelled law- abiding citizens from co-operating with them, now sounded the note of alarm and hastened to join hands with all who were willing to stand together for free- dom in the territories. Among these was Abraham Lincoln. He had cared little for politics when neither great party was fighting for much but the spoils. But now an issue had come into which every right-thinking man could throw his whole soul. He had never forgotten his visit to New Orleans in the early days, and the sight then witnessed, of men, women, and children sold like cattle, with no more regard to their wishes THREE GREAT PRESIDENTS 339 and a£Fection8 than if they had been cattle. It was a new Abe lincoln who caught up the standard of Free Soil in Illinois and bore it bravely through the mem- orable contest with Stephen A. Douglas for the sen- atorship. Douglas did not care whether slavery were voted up or were voted down. Mr. Lincoln did care. He wanted slavery voted down. He stood for rights for justice^ for humanity. He was as skillful in debate as was the little giant. He was stronger than he in pure logic. He was greater in moral ele- vation. His speeches were a revelation to the coun- try. He forced Douglas to take a position which indeed gained him the senatorship, but later lost him the presidency. After the contest for the senatorship was over, Mr. Lincoln went East. He gave an address in Cooper Institute, New York, on the opinions of the fathers of the republic respecting slavery that was as com- plete a demonstration as any problem or theorem in Euclid. He spoke in New Haven and in other cities of Connecticut. Then it was that I first saw him and heard him. I had heard Tom Corwin and had been disappointed. He lacked moral earnestness. I had heard Wendell Phillips and had been delighted. But he lacked practical plans for action. I had heard Beecher and had been stirred by his enthusiasm, half spiritual and half militant. But here was a man from the West who had had no such training as those men, who had none of the graces of manner or of per- son which belonged to some of them, who was tall, and lank, and homely, who yet had the power to convince your understanding, to make you see things exactly as he saw them, to make you feel what he felt, to capture and hold captive your very soul, 340 THREE GREAT PRESIDENTS and all this without a siDgle recognized art of the rhetorician. Plain, clear, logical, forceful — ^the great cause for which he spoke glorified him as he glorified it. He made a political fight grand by imparting to it a moral quality. It was no longer a struggle for office, it was a battle for righteousness. In no other kind of a contest could Abraham Lincoln have come to the front. In no other could he have won the fadeless crown of glory which he now wears and will wear through all the coming centuries. If there were no sorrow in the world, pity and sympathy would be unnecessary. If there were no poison, no antidote would be needed. If there were no wrong and cruelty, heroic self-sacrifice would not be required. And if there had been no slavery issue, Abraham Lincoln would not have been called from the obscurity of his country home to guide the nation through its momentous struggle for life. The great cause demanded the great man. Lincoln answered the call and, in a most marvelous degree, met all the needs of the crisis. Elected president, he never forgot that he was a Boutheru man by birth, and his heart ached all through the great struggle for the sufferings of the Southern people. Yet he never flinched in pressing forward in the contest, and never for a moment lost sight of the great end to be secured — ^union first — and then union and universal freedom. He had no malice in his heart. His first inaugural address would have won to his side any people not already in the grasp of the mad frenzy of revolution. But it come too late. The die was cast. The long series of agitating questions which had distracted the coun- try for seventy years were now to be settled on battle- THREE GREAT PRESIDENTS 341 fields^ the only place where they could be finally set- tled. Into the great straggle the South entered with a cheery spirit and with undoubting expectation of victory. Into the same struggle the North entered with a blind determination to win and a slowly gen- dered conception of the magnitude of the struggle. The participants in the contest on both sides were brave and heroic. Victory under such circum- stances was hard to obtain, and defeat could not be disgraceful. The leaders in the contest on both sides came into view like stars in the heavens, and many of them faded out of sight ; but the real planets vnth. their clear shining remained in the sky to the end and are there still — Grant, Sherman, Sheridan, Thomas, Lee, Jackson, Johnston — these at least are still shining, and now as the peaceful influence of time is felt, they are blending together their rays of glory on the country which they all loved, and for which all would gladly have fought against a foreign foe. And through it all, the long four years of death and sorrow, Lincoln waited only for the hour of victory that he might be merciful. Bitterly abused by his enemies, sometimes betrayed by his friends, often annoyed by the impatience of the over-zealous, he experienced a large measure of ingratitude in return for generosity, while he was bearing on his own great heart the sorrows of his country — of friends and foes alike. He came out of the crucible of affliction purified like fine gold. And when at the dedication of the cemetery at Gettysburg, after a great oration by Edward Everett, a prince among orators, Lincoln spoke for five minutes, he in that short time effaced from men's memory all the rounded periods of Everett's scholarly eloquence, as with the 342 THREE GREAT PRESIDENTS plainness of one of the common people, with the pathos of a great heart suffering almost to breaking, and with the inspiration of a Hebrew seer, he spoke those memorable sentences of consecration and hope that will live in the world's highest eloquence so long as the English language shall be spoken. To appreciate this address one should remember the circumstances under which it was delivered. The battle of Gettysburg was fought on the first three days of July, 1863. More than 20,000 on each side were either killed, wounded, or missing. On the fourth of July Lee was in retreat towards Virginia. On the same day Vicksburg surrendered to Gfeneral Grant. It seemed as if the crisis had passed. But the final outcome of the war was not yet determined. The war was to continue a year and three quarters longer. It was the 19th of November, 1863, when the cemetery at Gettysburg was dedicated and Mr. Lin- coln made his memorable address. It waB just two months after the battle of Ghickamauga, and less than a week before the great battle at Chattanooga and Lookout Mountain. The shadow of danger and sorrow was resting on Lincoln as he spoke. Let me repeat his memorable words. Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth upon this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting-place for those who here gave their lives that that na- tion might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we THREE GREAT PRESIDENTS 343 should do this. But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate — we can not consecrate — ^we can not hallow — this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here have conse- crated it, far above our power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember, what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who. fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remain- ing before us, — that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion — that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain — that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — ^and that government of the people, by the people, and for the people shall not perish from the earth. The years went on — the rebellion broke down at last — was crushed, in fact — Lee and Johnston sur- rendered— ^the union was safe, freedom had been secured — ^joy filled the hearts of the victors — the cup of blessing full to overflowing was just ready for the nation's lips, when on the evening of Good Fri- day— ^the day on which our Savior was crucified, the bullet of an assassin -sped on its fatal way and before the sun of another day was well on its course in the heavens, the spirit of Abraham Lincoln had gone back to God who gave it, and there was left to a sorrow-stricken people only his lifeless body over which to mourn. And the nation literally lifted up its voice and wept. In the home of a distinguished citizen of Min- neapolis there hangs a large picture, the portrait of Abraham Lincoln. Many of you doubtless have seen it. It is an admirable likeness. I wish I could describe it to you as an artist might, but I can not. —23 344 THREE GREAT PRESIDENTS The face^ though serioijs, has none of the wan and sad look that came to it in later days. It is pleasant and peaceful. But the one thing to which face and figure alike bear witness is strength^ not intellectual nor physical strength mainly^ but moral strength, backed by both of these. There is nothing to indicate that the subject is not a gentleman, yet you would never think of labeling the picture "A Portrait of a Gentleman," but you would have no hesitation in labeling it "The Portrait of a Man." Great strength of character is here joined with intellectual power and sweetness of spirit. And such was Abraham Lincoln — strong, rugged, forceful, true, yet gentle, tender and of almost infinite charity. In Winston ChurchilFs novel. The Crisis^ there is a passage describing the visit to Lincoln of a young Southern woman who hated him, as the enemy of the South, to beg for the pardon of her cousin who had been condemned to death as a spy. When at last President Lincoln grants the pardon, as lie had from the first intended to do, he said slowly — and the words remind me of his Gettysburg speech — "I am sparing his life, because the time for which we have been waiting and longing for four years is now at hand — the time to be merciful. Let us all thank God for it." No wonder the daughter of the South was aflfected. She crossed the room, her head lifted, her heart lifted, to where this man of sorrows stood smiling down at her. "Mr. Lincoln," she faltered "I did not know you when I came here. Oh, how I wish that every man, woman, and child in the South might see you as I have seen you to-day. I think — I think that some of their bitterness might be taken away." THREE GREAT PRESIDENTS 345 Perhaps it might have been if they could have seen him as he was. Ood only knows. But it was not to be. like Moses, the liberator of the Hebrews, who was permitted to see the promised land but not to enter it, Abraham Lincoln, the liberator of the en- slaved negroes, was permitted to catch a glimpse of the country redeemed but was not permitted to share in either the triumphs or the struggles of the new nation. It is as if, like our blessed Savior, the re- demption which he wrought could be completed only by his death. God grant that neither sacrifice may have been made in vain. God grant that this nation may firmly tread the path of honor and justice for which the work and sufferings of the martyred dead have so grandly prepared the way, and that the coming men, the young men of America, may "highly resolve" that Lincoln shall not have died in vain, but that the nation shall under God yet have a new birth of honor, and "that the government of the people, by the people, and for the people, shall not perish from the earth." GREATER WHITMAN COLLEGE* Mr. President, Ladies and Oentlemen: I know very well that the kind friends who have urged me to be present and to speak at this meet- ing very much overestimate the value of my services, and that in what I shall say I can not hope to real- ize their anticipations; yet I am very glad to be here and to be permitted to speak to you on an occasion of such real importance as this which has called us together. The proposition which we are to consider, as I understand it, is this: That the people of the three states of Washington, Oregon, and Idaho, com- bining, as far as may be, existing denominational colleges and adding liberal endowments, shall estab- lish here a great Christian college which shall meet the wants of these three states for higher Christian education. The colleges of New England almost without ex- ception were established as denominational institu- tions. Yale in Connecticut, Harvard, Amherst, and Williams in Massachusetts, Middlebury in Vermont, Dartmouth in New Hampshire, and Bowdoin in ^Delivered at Whitman College, Walla Walla, Washington, Novem- ber 18th, 1908, before an audience of leading citizens of Washington, Oregon, and Idaho, gathered to devise means for making Whitman College truly representative of the three states. 348 GREATER WHITMAN COLLEGE Maine, were all founded by the Congregationalists. To the best of my knowledge and belief, all of these colleges have to-day thrown off the denominational character, and are simply Christian institutions, where there is no proselyting attempted and where there is no danger that the student of any denomina- tion will be enticed away from his special faith ; and I beUeye that, as a result, in Yale College for exam- ple there are actually more Episcopal students than Congregational, while the accomplished Secretary of the College, Mr. Stokes, who is here for your help, himself a loyal Episcopalian, has as large a field of influence and does as much good in the college as if he were a Congregationalist. These New Eng- land colleges all stand for Christianity as they should; but they have grown in breadth and charity and power, and are able to train men for useful- ness in church and state, no matter to what branch of the church they may belong. All of these col- leges by reason of this change of attitude have to- day a much larger constituency than they would otherwise have, they exert a wider influence, they enjoy larger revenues, they place their stamp of in- tellectual and religious character upon a larger num- ber of young men who are to take a prominent part in marking out the destiny of our republic, and they do a more effective work for patriotism and Christianity than would have been possible if the old limitations had been retained. And for my- self I heartily approve of their changed attitude and, although I am a Congregationalist, I rejoice that they are no longer engaged in educating Congre- gationalists exclusively, or in trying to win young men to Congregationalism, and that they are engaged GREATER WHITMAN COLLEGE 349 in the much nobler work of training young men to be Christian patriots who will serve well their coun- try and who will help bring in the kingdom of God. Tet I am a sincere friend to the denominational college, as I am of every institution which does good work in the cause of education. I have no quarrel with men and women who want their sons and daughters to be educated under the same kind of influence which prevails in their special church. I recognize the fact that there is room enough for all ; that the work to be done for education is so great that all the resources of the public school system, and of Christian and denominational zeal, are not too great to meet the demands of the increasing millions of young men and women who are to be trained for the great life which is to be theirs in this mighty land where popular government pre- vails. I have never in all my life sought, in the slightest degree, to turn a student from his purpose to go to a denominational college; and I have even, when accident has thrown into my hands a student who had intended to enter a denominational col- lege, advised him to go to the college he intended to enter when he left home, and, if he found it agree- able, to remain there. I have been at the head of the University of Minnesota twenty-four years, and in that time have seen the student body grow from less than three hundred to forty-six hundred. This growth has un- doubtedly interfered with the growth of the half dozen denominational colleges of the state ; but these colleges know very well that the University has not grown because I have attempted to pull down or weaken the denominational colleges; that it has 350 GREATER WHITMAN COLLEGE grown because I have tried to build up and make more useful the State University itself. They know well that there is no spirit in me of hostility to them ; and, as a consequence, I believe I enjoy the real friendship and good will of every president in the state, and certainly every president in the state and every college in the state has my hearty good will. Carleton (College, the Congregationalist college, has already cast off its denominational garments, and occupies now the same position as the New England colleges, a Christian college devoted to Christian and not denominational education. I think I need not dwell upon the value of a good college. The safety of the state depends upon eilucation and religion. The intelligent, educated man ought to be worth more to the state than the ignorant man; and he is, other things being equal. Of course there are bad men who are educated and there are good men who are not educated. But the bad man would be no better without education and the good man would be no worse if he were educated. Public opinion rules in this country and public opinion is the aggregate sentiment of the people. There must be leaders of public opinion, and they must be intelligent. But it is hardly less necessary for the people generally to be trained to think, otherwise they will follow the leadership not of wise men but of shallow pretenders who will lead only to disaster. The higher the standard of edu- cation in a state and the more general advanced education, the better ought to be the legislation and the more perfect the administration of justice and the more dominant the civic virtues of temperance, charity, and justice. GREATER WHITMAN COLLEGE 351 There is something very inspiring in the thought of the West. I feel it in Minnesota in contrast with the East. I feel it even more out here, where the mountains are so high and the rivers so numer< ous and mighty, and the areas of states are so mag- nificent, and the forests are so grand, and the prod- ucts of the soil are so abundant, and the waves of the greatest ocean of the world are breaking on your shores, and the waters are waiting to serve alike the West and the further East as the minister of commerce. It is a region where men ought to grow. You can raise nothing better, or nobler, or more valu- able— and these men are now your boys. To train them for God and country you need a first-class col- lege. Here you have in the three states interested in building up a great college in Walla Walla 250,000 square miles of territory, that is 60 times as large as Connecticut, and Connecticut has Yale. These three states probably have many hundred times the wealth Connecticut had when Yale College was founded, and possibilities of wealth almost illimit- able to be developed in the future. It seems an easy thing to realize the plans which have been made for a great college in this place — and it is. You can do it, with hardly a fraction of the self-denial which built Yale. There is no other enterprise into which you can put your money that will tell so mightily for the intelligence of the people, for wise methods of development of the natural resources of your states, and for your reputation at home and abroad, as will a great and reputable and successful institution of learning, as broad as Christianity and as compre- hensive as human knowledge. What gives more fame 352 GREATER WHITMAN COLLEGE to Massachusetts than Harvard University? For what is Connecticut more honored than for Yale University. What is it that makes Michigan known outside of her own borders but her University? When the territory of Minnesota was organized there were three towns that were competitors for the location of public institutions. St. Paul took the Capitol; Stillwater took the State Prison; Minneapolis had to be content with the University and she was ter- ribly disappointed that she did not get the State Prison instead — ^there was more profit in furnishing supplies. But to-day the University is worth more to Minneapolis than both Capitol and Prison would be. It draws the best kind of people to the city to educate their children; and, as it sends out its 500 or 600 graduates every year, it notably raises the intellectual standing of the whole state, and in a measure of the whole west even as far as Wash- ington. Is it not worth while to establish here a great college that shall go on its way in all the centuries to come, doing the work that must be done and can never be finished till human life on this planet shall come to an end ; fitting generations after generations to take the place and bear the responsibilities and do the work of the preceding generations as they pass away? Is it not — to build such an institution — ^as near building for eternity as is possible in this world? Do not the men who found and sustain such an institution secure for themselves an ideal im- mortality, as the forces which they have set at work go on, century after century, training, ennobling, inspiring the incoming generations, and ever holding up before them higher ideals of what the individual life should be, what the scholar should be, and what GREATER WHITMAN COLLEGE 353 the scholar should do for his associates and for the state? It can not but be a joy to think that we have had something to do with setting in operation forces that will go on forever; for a great college will never die, and will forever train the children to the last generation for noble and beneficent lives and for the highest service in the state. I have not come twenty-five hundred miles to tell you, intelligent, enterprising, successful business men of the West, that a great college established here will pay and more than pay dollar for dollar all that you expend upon it. In one sense it will and even more, but in another sense it will not. You do not expect to receive again the money which you spend every day for food and necessaries and luxuries for your family. But you do exi)ect to receive it again and you do receive it again a hundred fold, transmut- ed into the comfort and peace and joy and happiness of wife and children dearer to you than your own life. And the college will never return your money dollar for dollar, but it will return to you what you will value far more than the money. It will render to you great service which only it can render. It will train your children for higher and nobler work. It will raise the standard of education in every school in your three states. It will furnish you men to solve the difficult problems of your growth. It will create a taste for culture and for knowledge. It will make your whole country, doubly blessed of God as it is in its climate and resources, a place where think- ing men and earnest men and men with a purpose will be glad to live. The modern college must, in the nature of things, be very unlike the college of a hundred or even fifty 354 GREATER WHITMAN COLLEGE years ago. It can not be carried on snccessfuUy without an immensely increased expenditure of money. The old college consisted of rooms with a teacher. The new college means laboratories with expensive equipments. It means seminar rooms with special libraries, and vastly multiplied subjects in the curriculum. When I was an undergraduate at Yale, Latin and Greek with a chance at French, mathematics, astronomy, natural philosophy, com- position, intellectual philosophy, political economy, and a taste of history and chemistry, constituted about the whole of the college course. It did us good. MVe had to work. But it would be nothing more than a skeleton of the college course of to-day. The apparatus amounted to nothing. Now physics must have its laboratories equipped with tens of thou- sands of dollars' worth of apparatus. Hundreds of microscopes are required for special work in biology. Chemistry under the old system was taught by lec- tures. The students did nothing in the laboratory. They sat in rows in the lecture room and watched the professor mix chemicals and noted how the mix- ture changed color and became blue or green or yel- low or red as the professor said it would, and wlien the result did not prove to be what he had predicted, they laughed. They got no real knowledge of chem- istry. Now the students do things. They mix the chemicals. They exi)eriment. They demonstrate the principles of chemistry by doing what in the olden time only the professor did. They swarm in the laboratories. They use up many thousands of dol- lars' worth of materials. They are waited on and overlooked and guided by a dozen instructors instead of one. And it all costs money. The necessary in- GREATER WHITMAN COLLEGE 355 crease in the number of inBtructors and in the ap- paratus and supplies of materials makes a largely increased expenditure inevitable. The old education was good as far as it went. It trained men and sometimes developed power in them. But it made little of the sciences; and to-day education with its outlook on life makes much of the sciences and must do sOy if men are to be trained for the multitude of new and important occupations which have come into vogue. It is a race to see which institution shall ofFer the most and the best. And it is a hard race for the small college. All honor to the patient and devoted men who run the small college and doubt- less do great good to their pupils. But the trend of youth is not towards the small college but towards the great universities and colleges. What is wanted, then, is a college large enough to embrace all essential studies in its curriculum and to secure teachers of sufficient ability and in required number, and with money enough to purchase adequate equipment and pay living salaries. And the only way to secure such a college, where no one wealthy donor is ready to found and support it, is for the people of reason- ably large areas of country to unite and find as they always find that in union there is strength. It was my privilege a short time ago to read in the World To-Day articles on Oregon, Washing- ton, and Idaho, written each by a citizen of the state described. Of Washington it was said: "Whether dealing in generalities or in actual figures, when treating of Washington and its possibilities it is im- possible to avoid the superlative. Last year the wheat crop in eastern Washington exceeded forty million bushels; the Inland Empire, as that portion 356 GREATER WHITMAN COLLEGE of the state is known, offers to support millions of industrious and happy people. Washington is equal in area to all of the New England states with Dela- ware and the District of Columbia added: its lat- est possibilities far surpass anything known in those commonwealths. It invites the man of capital and the industrious man, able and determined to make a home for himself. Its citizenship is known for its progressiveness. Its public school lands afford a basis to provide an income with which to build an unexcelled school system. In short, its possibilities are almost limitless." Of Oregon I learn that she possesses every cli- matic condition known to the temperate zone. That the Oregon apple surpasses all others. That it will not be long before the fruit crop will be f 40,000,000 or 150,000,000 a year. That its climate is health- ful and delightful. That she has incomparable scen- ery of limpid streams and endless stretches of noble forest, snow-crowned mountains, and fertile valleys. That her water power is remarkable; her products of lumbe!r, beef, fish, and dairy immense; and that unselfish patriotism is doing everything possible to improve the commonwealth, and love of home is greater than in any other state. And Idaho — larger than New England — 20,000,- 000 acres of timber land. 17,000,000 acres of graz- ing land. 14,000,000 acres of agricultural land and five or six million of mineral land. Wheat 15,000,000 bushels. Oats 28,000,000. 9,000,000 head of hogs, cattle, and sheep. Hay crop beyond computation. Soil, irrigated, richest to be found anywhere. But best of all the people are devoted to educational interests, from the common school to the higher GREATER WHITMAN COLLEGE 357 education. "They know," I quote from Senator Borah, "that such wonderful wealth as the state possesses, will in the hands of an educated and loyal citizenship bring those civic virtues which exalt a people, and that the same wealth in the hands' of a people adventurous, devoid of culture and refinement, is a certain precursor of state degradation." Here you have three states that in the aggre- gate are more than three and a half times as large as all New England, and vastly superior to New England in the fertility of soil, variety and abund- ance of products, in water power and facilities for manufacturing, and possessed of as splendid harbors and coast line for trade with China and Japan as New England has for trade with Europe. Your ability to establish a greal; college is immeasurably greater than was New England's at the founding of any of her great colleges. Yet New England has to-day at least fifteen eminently respectable colleges or universities, well supported, all of them growing in number of students and in their influence on the country. The task which is proposed, to build a great institution for Oregon, Washington, and Idaho, is one of very little difficulty as it seems to me compared with what New England in her compara- tive poverty has accomplished. And if you consider for a moment how much the colleges have added to the reputation and influence of New England and from that infer how much a first-class college would do for these three imperial states of the West, your enthusiasm must kindle at the prospect, and your resolution must speedily be taken that the col- lege shall be established. But what will be the attitude of the states and 358 GREATER WHITMAN COLLEGE the state universities towards this new college? Will they regard it as an intruder, an unwelcome rival, interfering with the successful prosecution of the work of pubUc education to which the states are all so thoroughly committed and for which the state universities exist? Perhaps you can answer these questions better than I can, for you know your own people and institutions better than I do. But I do believe, I can not for a moment doubt, that your new college, if made worthy of the states to which it is to minister, will be regarded with pride by all the states concerned, and that every state university will cordially welcome it as a iH)werful ally in the war against ignorance and for the dis- semination of knowledge. I do not believe there is a president of a state university in any one of these states who would not be ready to bid you ^^Ood speed" in your work of establishing and main- taining such a noble Christian college as you pro- pose. There is really nothing petty or mean about the states and I hope the same may be said of the state universities and their presidents. If there is anything to be done in the way of education that we of the state universities can not do, we are heartily glad, I am sure, to have institu- tions established by private benevolence that can and will do this necessary work. If you think that there ought to be more religious instruction and more religious influence exerted on the students than is possible in a state university, we are only too glad to have you provide for this religious instruction and influence in your own way and by methods of your own choosing. We of the state universities are trustees for all the people of the state. We can GREATER WHITMAN COLLEGE 359 not teach Protestantism to the injury of Catholicism. We can not teach special creeds of one denomination to the destruction of the creeds of the other denomi- nations. But some things we can do and we do do. I would not stay one day in a state university if I were hampered in the maintenance of Christianity, and were compelled to recognize agnosticism as being as good as Christianity. I said to the Regents of the University of Minnesota in my inaugural ad- dress that I must be free as a believer in Chris- tianity, and daily service in chapel, with singing of hymns, reading of Scriptures, and prayer to God, has gone on all these years, and hundreds of stu- dents daily attend these services, their attendance being entirely voluntary and not on compulsion. The atmosphere, so to speak, of the University of Minne- sota is as Christian as the atmosphere of any col- lege in the land. But I can not turn the educa- tional work of the University out of its course. I can not suspend recitations for the sake of holding prayer meetings nor stop the established order of work for the sake of promoting a revival, nor can I do very much religious teaching, except so far as the students in voluntary associations of the Y. M. C. A. and the Y. W. C. A. may invite such teaching. The students know where I stand and what I stand for, and I hope that their lives are influenced for good by my attitude and my occasional addresses to them; but for all that the Christian college can do more in the line of Christian teach- ing and work than the state university can, and where the work is not overdone I have no doubt it is exceedingly beneficial. We of the state univer- sities are simply glad that the Christian colleges -24 360 GREATER WHITMAN COLLEGE can do more of this work than we can. We wel- come, then, the Christian college as an ally in the work of education. First, because there is so much work to be done that the state university can not alone do it all. Second, because there are many par- ents who wish their children to be under stricter guidance in matters of religious belief than they can be at a state university, and there should be Christian colleges where this guidance can be ob- tained. And third, because we of the state uni- versities heartily rejoice in every influence which tends to strengthen Christianity, to keep alive, in young people, the love of God and the love of neigh- bor, and to make the teachings of tTesus the directing principles of their lives; and we welcome the Chris- tian college as meaning to do this and, when wisely directed, actually doing it, and therein we rejoice. We have therefore no feeling of jealousy, envy, ill- will, or hostility towards the Christian college. I am sure you will experience none of these malevolent feelings at the hands of any of your state univer- sities if you establish a great Christian college here ; but, on the contrary, you will be met with the most hearty good wishes. At least you would receive this sort of treatment and encouragement from me, if I lived in one of these states and were an official in a state university. For the state university will never be out of work, never lack for students to teach, never be without its own particular field to occupy, no matter how many Christian colleges may be founded, for back of it is the state, and the state will not die. I have thus spoken very frankly as to the prob- able feeling of the state universities towards your en- GREATER WHITMAN COLLEGE 361 terprise, and if I have introduced too much the per- sonal note and have spoken from experience, I am sure you will forgive, I am not here for any selfish purpose, and certainly not to try to build up either the state university or the Christian college, the one at the expense of the other, but rather I am seeking to promote the welfare of both and therefore I am recommending what I believe will in the end be for the best interests of education in these great states and for the best interests of public and Chris- tian education and nurture. I hope I have not said a word that can cause the slightest unpleasant feel- ing in any one of you, for I really want you to have the best. Your forests will be cut down and will largely disappear. Your minerals may be exhausted. Your fisheries may cease to be profitable. Your soil must not lose its fertility and must continue to produce its wealth of food or men will perish. Economic and industrial conditions may change and wealth or poverty may result. But one thing will never change. Children will continue to be born into the world as helpless and as ignorant as they al- ways have been, and the greatest work of each gen- eration will always be to prepare the coming gener- ation to take the place of the departing generation. The work of education will never be done completely. It can never come to an end. We may safely leave the possible changes in the methods of creating wealth to each generation to take care of them as best they can. But for the training of the young for usefulness in this world and for happiness in the world to come, every generation is responsible directly to the coming generations and indirectly 362 GREATER WHITMAN COLLEGE to all coming generations, and that re8ponsibilil7 not one of us can escape. We must do our duty to our children as the fathers did their duty to us. THE FUTURE OF OUR COUNTRY * "The future of our country" is a subject upon which, at the present time, nearly every man has an opinion of his own. I can not doubt for a mo- ment that the future of our country will be essentially what we choose to make it The consideration of the subject, therefore, to-night, is not so much a mat^ ter of prophecy, as it is for the determination of a desirable policy. I am happy to believe that the opinions of our people are much less irreconcilable than might at first be supposed, the most conserva- tive being willing to admit that the conditions by which we are surrounded must in some measure af- fect our traditional policy, and the most radical being willing to admit that even with these conditions, our traditional policy should not be without its in- fluence. It should, however, be understood by both classes, that the policy of this country in the past has not been by any means as conservative as they are disposed to think. A people that, in their colo- nial state, waged eight years of war against the mightiest power of Europe, to obtain exemption from a comparatively insignificant tax imposed without * Delivered October 19th, 1898, at the Aaditoriam in Chicago, at the banquet in celebration of the Peace Jubilee, President McKinley and members of his cabinet being present. This was the closing address, and was delivered some time after midnight. 364 THE FUTURE OF OUR COUNTRY their consent^ and as a consequence, to their own great surprise and that of the rest of the world, secured their independence ; that persistently and suc- cessfully maintained their right against the claims of all nations to the entire territories west and north- west to the Mississipi River; that purchased the im- mense territory of Louisiana, stretching from the Mississippi and the Gulf west and northwest, nobody knew just how far, but beyond the limits of the wildest imagination of that day; that subsequently asserted and vindicated their right to the territory in the extreme Northwest, resting upon the Pacific coast; that took Florida from the grasp of Spain into their own arms; that annexed Texas; that wrested by war from Mexico what now constitutes half a dozen large states and territories of semi- tropical climate and production; that purchased of Russia, at the close of an exhausting civil war, ice- bound Alaska stretching away into the Arctic circle — a people that have done all this within a century can not be justly charged with a very wide departure from their traditional policy if they should conclude now once more to expand. Nor does it make the slightest difference that the expansion is now to be to the islands of the sea instead of to new parts of the continent as heretofore, for the people whose navies, under Dewey and his compeers, ride the ocean in triumph, need not care whether their ter- ritory is riveted to the Alleghanies and Rockies, or rests in tropical beauty on the bosom of old Ocean. The acquisition of new territory is not contrary to our policy in the past. It is, indeed, in perfect accordance with that policy. It is just what the nation has been doing from its earliest years. THE FUTURE OF OUR COUNTRY 305 But whether it is desirable for us to acquire more territory now, is not a question to be decided ex- clusively by our past policy, be that what it may, but it is to be decided by present expediency. It is a practical question to be determined by our in- terests and our duty. Let us look for a moment at the facts. We have just emerged from a short but decisive war with Spain, as a result of which Cuba, Porto Bico, part of the Philippine Islands and the Ladrone Islands are in our hands. This war was not entered into by the nation in any spirit of con- quest and expansion. It was not a war forced upon the people of this country by the President, by Con- gress, by the politicians, nor by political parties. In the face of the most trying and irritating events, well fitted to stir the anger of the nation, the Presi- ident exhibited a marvelous moderation and self- control, and, while firmly demanding, in as con- ciliatory a spirit as possible, that the cruelties in Cuba should cease, he did not proclaim hostilities until he was unmistakably required to do so by the almost unanimous voice of the American people. No other war ever entered into by the country was sustained with such unanimil^ of i>opular senti- ment as was the war with Spain. In the prosecu- tion of the war and in the diplomatic proceedings of a later date, the President carefully noted the drift of public opinion and in all respects as care- fully followed the manifest wishes of the people. No president, not even the revered Abraham Lincoln, ever kept himself in time of war, in closer touch with the American people, or more scrupulously pursued the policy which they desired, and the American people are satisfied with what has been accomplished. 366 THE FUTURE OF OUR COUNTRY There are heroes of the war, not a few, whose achieve- ments will be remembered in all coming time with admiration and with pride, but it is not too much to say, it is only just to say, that the central figure in the conflict, by reason of his comprehensive grasp of the whole situation, his unhesitating assumption of responsibility, and his wise and prompt direction of the forces on land and water alike, securing the greatest results in the briefest possible time, the real hero of the war, is undoubtedly the president of the republic. The American people demanded the war with Bpain in the interest of humanity. No holier war was ever waged. And even now, when the victory is ours, the American people have not been carried away by an insane desire for territorial expansion; they do not favor what some gentlemen are pleased to call a policy of imperialism. But they are not insensible to existing conditions, and not unprepared to act as the conditions may require. If Cuba is capable of self-government, and will maintain free- dom and justice, our people will hail free Cuba with universal acclamation and will not regret a dollar of the millions spent for Cuban independence. In this hour of triumph the attitude of the American people, calmly waiting for the terms of peace, to ascertain what shall be the final disposition of the territory,' which, as a result of the war waged un- selfishly for humanity, has fallen into our hands, is simply sublime. There is no unrest and no dis- trust. With perfect confidence in the sagacity and patriotism of the President, the nation waits in si- lence and in hope, and "not a wave of trouble rolls across its peaceful breast," despite all the wails of THE FUTURE OF OUR COUNTRY 367 those gentlemen who, mistaking the past policy of the country, desire it to remain forever one and un- changeable; who are inexpressibly grieved because the giant is no longer content with the nursery rhymes which were sung around his cradle, but in- sists on singing the Battle Hymn of the Republic : In the beauty of the lilies Christ was bom across the sea, With a glory in his bosom that transfigures you and lAe ; As he died to make men holy, let us die to make men free, While God is marching on. We all hope that our country in the future will be the home of liberty, of justice, and of humanity. And it is not a bad way to promote these at home, to do something for liberty and justice and humanity in the islands of the ocean. The man who thinks only of himself grows narrow and mean, and so does the nation. We have given of our bounty to the weak and the suffering, and even while we were giving, the blessing came upon us in fullest measure; the hearts of our own people were knit together again in love, and sectional feeling and animosity passed away. The bitterness of party spirit and the shib- boleths of party hate disappeared ; the sympathy and good will of the mother country demanded the neu- trality of Europe, and in turn won for herself from this country a love stronger and heartier than was ever before felt by this people for Great Britain since the Pilgrims left her shores. We want no formal alliance even with England, but henceforth in the contests which endanger the liberty or the rights of men, these two countries will stand together, and the crowned heads that are still speculating on the necessity of maintaining the balance of power. 368 THE FUTURE OF OUR COUNTRY and using Turkey as a weight in the scales, must take notice that' the United States is henceforth to be reckoned as one of the powers of the world whose wishes are not to be entirely disregarded by the con- tinent of Europe. The Nicaragua-Panama canal should unquestion- ably be built, either by a private company or by the nation, but not by any union of the two, the nation furnishing the money and the company the expe- rience, and in the end the company having the money and the nation the experience. There has been too much of that; let us have no more of it, but let the canal be built, our treaty obligations not being over- looked. Its influence on our future prosperity will be beyond calculation, and if our dreams of com- mercial greatness in the East are ever realized, this canal will be doubly important, Let it be built, honestly built, for the good of mankind, and it will add largely to American prosi)erity. I am glad that Hawaii is ours. It ought to be. I am glad that there is hope that Porto Bico will be ours, the people not being unwilling. I do not desire Cuba, but I would take care of Cuba or make her take care of herself. I do not want the Philippine Archipelago, but I would hold Manila certainly and the island of Luzon, and I think I would let the rest of the archipelago try its hand at self-govern- ment. I am unwilling to have the flower of our youth spend their lives or lose their lives in per- forming police duty among a half-civilized people. Believed of Spanish taxation and repression, .allowed to use their money for their own improvement, stimu- lated by the sight of American liberty, American schools, and American justice, I believe the people THE FUTURE OF OUR COUNTRY 369 of the archipelago might be safely left to work out their own salvation, and if they can, it is a great deal better that they should than that we should do it for them. Having thus very briefly disposed of the various territories which the nation does not quite know what to do withy and having undoubtedly relieved the mind of the President on this matter, I close with the simple hope that, in the future, our people may be industrious, prosperous, virtuous, and happy; that our rulers may be men who fear God and work righteousness; that our nation by its example of liberty and justice for all, may be the means of overthrowing tyranny and oppression everywhere, and of lifting up and comforting the down-trodden, and the oppressed, and that by a wise employment of the industrial forces at home, it may secure the highest utility of capital, and the most abundant reward of labor for all the people of our country. AMERICAN PROGRESS* It is both natural and wise for a people to think well of a country in which they live, whether it be theirs by birth or adoption. "Our nation," as Abra- ham Lincoln so felicitously said at Gettysburg, was "conceived in liberty and dedicated to the propo- sition that all men are created equal;" our gov- ernment is "government of the people, by the people, and for the people," and surely no people on the face of the earth, looking back and noting the bless- ings which have come to them, have greater reason than we have to say with the Psalmist: "Ood hath not dealt so with any nation." The western hemi- sphere seems to have been kept hid from the rest of the world for so many centuries, in order that it might, at just the right time, become the home of just the right people, to lay the foundations of in- stitutions most fitted to promote the development and happiness of mankind. The right time came when Europe awoke from its intellectual and religious slumbers. America was discovered, but even then the right people were not ready for its settlement. The right people came when, just before the birth of Milton, the English estab- lished a colony in Virginia ; when, a few years later, ^Delivered at the commencement of the University of Wisconsin, June 21st, 1893. 372 AMERICAN PROGRESS the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Bock; and when, in a comparatiyely short time, the best blood of half a dozen countries in Europe contributed to the set- tlement of various colonies. The opening of a new hemisphere to the Old World was as if God were giving mankind another new testament, under which the human race, that had so signally failed in the past, under the inspira- tion alike of Sinai and Calvary, might begin once more the race life, under new conditions, in a land free from guilt, from historic wrongs, and from ir- remediable injustice, a land in which the homeless might find a home, and in which the persecuted might find rest. It was as if Ood had given to humanity in its maturity the privilege of wiping out from its own memory and from the pages of the recording angel the sins and mistakes of all its earlier years, and of beginning on a clean page to write the future history of the race. And now for nearly 300 years our fathers or we ourselves have been writing that history. Whatever its record of good or evil. It is altogether too large for us to inspect with any mi- nuteness to-day. We know that there are pages black with injustice, blotted and stained with the record of a great nation's shame, only partly obliterated by its repentant tears and the kindly effacing hand of time. And we know, too, that there are pages glowing with deeds of justice, charity, and love, ra- diant with a patriotism as sweet and pure as angelic faces. If we are to deal with life in this country, we must know the past of our country. It is cer- tainly most fitting that in this historic year, when the nations of the world have . gathered in the heart AMERICAN PROGRESS 373 of our country to study ^ith us the triumphs of civilization which every land can display, we should feel a just pride in our achievements, and be inspired by the mighty contrasts between the present and the past. But we shall fail most lamentably of learning the lesson of the hour and of the age, if our hearts are not filled with a new sense of gratitude for the great blessings which €k>d has bestowed upon us, if we are not more than ever impressed with our grand opportunities, and our solenm responsibilities and duties. The story of the life of the first colo- nists and of the people in the early years of our coun- try, is interesting, inspiring, and yet pathetic. What a bare life was theirs compared with ours! How little of comfort, of opportunities, of personal de- velopment, there was for most people, previous to the present century. It was a struggle for existence, such as ought to make the sleek i)essimists of litera- ture in our day blush, when they talk about life now being a struggle for existence. Only 105 years of national life have gone by and we are a nation of nearly 65,000,000 of people. The descendants of the men and women of the Revolution are here, the race from which they sprang no longer distinguishable, unless it were English. But how many others are here, the income of the last fifty years. Wave after wave of immigration has rolled in upon our shores, from the time of Ireland's famine to the last dis- covery of America, in recent years, by the Italians. Germans are here by the millions, Scandinavians by the hundred thousands, French, Scotch, Welsh, Poles, Bohemians; some at least of almost every civilized nation under heaven, and thousands upon thousands 374 AMERICAN PROGRESS of most of these races. Proud Boston, that thinks herself the quintessence of American culture, is largely a city of foreigners. But it is none the less American; its occasional Irish mayor answering the purpose just as well as if he had in his veins the blood of all the Mathers; and New York, the commercial emporium of America, is controlled bj citizens of foreign birth. If there are any remnants of old Dutch settlers left, the Stuyvesants, Van Twillers, Van Curlets, Van Bensselaers, Hardebrecks, and Ten Broecks, they do not appear outside of the social and financial circles, and are apparently content to leave the higher and more difficult matters of gov- ernment to the more vigorous races that have but recently invaded the city; and the sons of New Eng- land, to whom New York is so largely indebted for the growth of business and the piling up of wealth, are too busy making money to attend to the gov- ernment of the city, and, like their Dutch neighbors, are apparently willing to leave politics and the man- agement of municipal affairs to whatever race may have arrived in the country last. Yet New York is a delightful American city, with no suggestion of any foreign city except the presence of foreigners in large numbers, but of foreigners who also keep step to American music. More striking still is Chicago, that mighty city of the present, and destined, perhaps, to be the great- est city on the globe, if its corporate limits can be adequately extended. It is, it has been for years, a museum of nations. In one quarter, you are not merely among Bohemians; you are in Bohemia; in another, you are in Poland ; in another, in Germany. The language in these quarters is almost exclu- AMERICAN PROGIiESS 375 fiiyely that of the nation from which the entire popu- lation came. It is here no process of gradual mi- gration and progressive assimilation. It has been rather the migration of nations. Chicago has been taken possession of by these various nationalities as completely, if you will pardon a slight rhetorical exaggeration, as the land of Canaan was by the chil- dren of Israel; and what few natives there are in Chicago, when it comes to an election, are as pow- erless as the Canaanites in Jerusalem. I speak of these things, not by way of criticism or fault-finding; for I believe that the outcome is to be a greater republic and a nobler people than would have been possible under less trying conditions. I speak of these simply as facts to illustrate the great difficulties under which our country has la- bored for the last half century, not merely in carry- ing forward its unprecedented development under the ordinary conditions of natural growth, but in uni- fying, assimilating, and Americanizing the millions and tens of millions of immigrants, differing in hab- its, customs, language, and modes of thinking from the natives of the country and differing hardly less among themselves. It would be glory enough to our country, if, under these trying conditions, with this ever-increasing in- flux of millions of all nations and tongues under heaven, of all degrees of culture, of all kinds of be- liefs, it had merely held its own in all but material development. But when it is seen, as it easily may be, that the nation, in spite of all these difficulties, has made substantial progress in the last fifty years, in the development of both character and culture, the spectacle is simply sublime. I present it to you to-day, -25 376 AMERICAN PROGRESS because I have a very geiuiine contempt for a class of men who are forever proclaiming the failure of Christianity, or the failure of education, or the fail- ure of the human mind, or the failure of God, because everything is not yet perfect. The progress made by our country in material development could not, perhaps, be better shown than it is in the Oreat Exposition at Chicago. Agri- culture, the mechanic arts, the means of transpor- tation, horticulture, machinery, invention, electricity, and the fine arts are there exhibited in such a way as to show at once our present attainment and the history of our progress through the past years. The record ought to satisfy us, for it shows more prog- ress in everything, except the fine arts, during the present century, than in all preceding time. And as a most blessed incident of this material develop- ment, no reasonable man can doubt that the rewards of labor have been greatly increased, both wages and the purchasing power of a given sum having been augmented, so that the outcome is greater general comfort than either this nation or any other has ever known before. And the conditions of our country, to which I have already referred, have not been unfavorable for this material development. To it the immigration has largely contributed. A continent was to be subdued, and an army of workers came and subdued it. A universal desire for a better condition and greater comfort has made all the people eager to engage in enterprises which promised success ; and in all mat- ters pertaining to invention, production, and trans- portation, there has been very little diversity of feel- ing and interest among our people, except as to the AMERICAN PROGRESS 377 ever-recurring question : What share of the product labor shall have as its own, and what share, capital. There has been plenty to do ; plenty of workers ; and naturally the production has been great. The result has been in the highest degree satisfactory; but, under the circumstances, not at all surprising. As respects our progress in character, it may be said that we do not know much more about God, or Heaven, or the future life, than our fathers did. We do not keep the Sabbath with as much strictness as they did. The church is lenient towards amuse- ments that were formerly deemed irreligious. The church does not control individual thinking as much as formerly, and theological speculations are per- mitted in most churches without censure that in the olden time would have been deemed heresy worthy of the most severe ecclesiastical discipline. You may think these changes bad or good, according to your training. But the thoughts of the present age re- specting God and the Divine government, are much more cheerful and hopeful and worthy of our Father in Heaven than were the thoughts of the church a century ago. Ministers and other Christians do not drink as much rum as they did in those depressing days. The Sabbath is used for the entertainment and instruction of millions of delighted children, instead of being made a day of peculiar discomfort by the studied repression of all the natural impulses and desires without the expression of anything natural whatever. The religion of the day is built less on Moses, and the imprecatory Psalms, and Isaiah, and Jeremiah, and possibly Paul, and a good deal more on Jesus Christ. If it does not keep Christians as much as formerly from mixing with the world, it 378 AMERICAN PROGRESS enables them to do a great deal more than formerly to make the world better. If piety consists in per- petual introspection and a daily solenm balancing of accounts to see whether we are going to Heaven or to Hell, with the presumption in favor of the lat- ter as becomes the truly humble, undoubtedly there is very much less of it than there formerly was ; but, if piety means the possession of the spirit of Christ, the unselfish out-going of the soul towards others for their good, charity, philanthropy, love to God and love to men — ^as I think it does — then no other age has had as much piety in it as the present. I do not mean that the men of former times were less heroic in their devotion or less well-meaning in their service; I do mean that we have found a better way, even as Jesus of Nazareth pointed out a better way than that of Moses. There are in our country various religious de- nominations, which in other times and places have been state churches. These have worked here^ side by side, under perfect equality so far as the state is concerned, and it has been very much to the advan- tage of all. Every one of these churches that .have had in past times recognition as state churches, the Roman Catholic in many countries, the Protestant Episcopal in England, the Presbyterian in Scotland, the Lutheran in Scandinavia and Germany, and the Congregational in Connecticut and Massachusetts, every one of these has attained a better character, has done better work, has shown more of the Chris- tian spirit, is more clearly in charity with others than when it was recognized as a state church. "My king- dom,'' said Jesus, "is not of this world." The more the church lets go the weapons of tem- AMERICAN PROGRESS 379 poral power^ and trusts exclusively to spiritual forces, operating through service done in His name, the bet- ter for the church and the better for the world. We still hear occasionally the roar of theological rage; prejudice, bigotry, the substitution of a creed for a life as the essential thing, the magnifying of unimportant differences and the belittling of the great things of character, all these things are seen or heard still to some extent, but in a very trifling degree compared with fifty years ago. No essential principle of belief has been lost. It may have been modified in its statement. And best of all, there has come a genuine respect with kindly feeling among the different bodies of Christian people, so that they can rejoice even in all the good things that come to their neighbors, and can mourn over their mis- fortunes. There is a good deal more of Christ in this spirit than in the old one. Nearly twenty millions of people in this country are professedly Christians, while a much larger num- ber are in full sympathy with Christianity, and doubt- less many of these are as good Christians as most of the others. I do not know how we are to judge of the spiritual progress of our country and of its growth in character except by the spirit and life of the people. If the spirit of love, which was most strikingly characteristic of the Master, is not more strikingly characteristic of us as a people than it was of any people before, I am not able to read aright the motives which influence men in their acts. The time has been when stranger and enemy were synonymous ; when fidelity to God was best shown by violence to those who did not agree with the current opinion; when in the reign of one sovereign, as of Henry VIII, 380 AMERICAN PROGRESS 72,000 persons suffered death by the hand of the exe- cutioner so seemingly austere was public virtue ; when in good New England, severe judgments and rigid, unloving lives passed for the highest samples of piety. Our age seems to me, with all its faults, to have caught more of the spirit of Jesus and of his meaning when he said, "Inasmuch as ye did it unto one of these, ye did it unto to me," and to be doing more for men, women, and children in His name than any age before. At least I know that I would rather live with the people of to-day, of whatever name or creed, than with those of any former age, for life now is sweeter and more full of hope and peace than ever be- fore. Our country has paid special attention to edu- cation, and nowhere is education for all more possible than here. The range, too, of education has been greatly extended beyond what it was fifty years ago. Historj', that was hardly taught at all and certainly not in any scientific way, has become a most promi- nent part of the curriculum. New sciences have mul- tiplied, old sciences have had a new development, and the laboratories with their equipment have made progress possible that formerly was not dreamed of. The course of study from the kindergarten to the uni- versity has been greatly enriched — ^in what manner I need not stop to specify in the presence of a univer- sity audience. But after all that has been done we are still told, not indeed that our free education is an absolute failure, but that it is a failure so far at least that it has not accomplished many things which might reasonably have been expected. The Forumj a few months ago, contained an ar- ticle by a well-known eastern educator, in which it AMERICAN PROGRESS 381 was attempted to show "whereiu popular education has failed/' and if one must believe the indictment which was there drawn and must trust for relief to the astonishingly inadequate remedies which were there proposed, one might well despair of the repub- lic. The indictment, not seemingly expressing the sentiment of the writer in the Forum in all respects, but grouping together the facts as they appear to various critics, is in substance as follows : "In spite of all efforts to make education universal, all classes complain more than ever before of the condition of society. Education has not promoted general con- tentment, and therefore has not promoted general happiness. There is no increase of genuine reason- ableness in thought and action in the various classes of society. Everybody's learning to read has made bad books profitable. Quacks and imi>osters thrive. Popular delusions on all subjects, religion, politics, medicine, are common. Astrologers flourish more than ever ; popular folly shows itself in fiat money, in the Granger legislation of the '70s, in the buying and storing of silver, and in proposals to compel the government to buy agricultural products and issue paper money against the stock. Lynch law is still familiar, riots common, assassination avowed as a means of industrial regeneration. Even religious per- secution is rife. New tyrannies are constantly aris- ing, of which the walking delegate is a specimen. The methods of electioneering are without reason ; voters are irrational, reading only one intensely partisan paper, and not putting proper confidence in the in- dependent thinker. The distinction between rich and poor is intensified. Machines, while they relieve labor, make the operative's life monotonous and nar- 382 AMERICAN PROGRESS row. Wars are more destructiye than ever. The coun- try pays twenty-seven years after the war more for pensions than is needed to sustain the largest army in Europe. Nobody is secure in employment, because the rich can dismiss when they please. Only produc- tion is looked for, and no thought given to those fine human qualities which ought to be the ultimate product desired." This is indeed a formidable catalogue of evils. But I think very few people would ever have thought of arraigning our popular education as the cause. But the ingenious writer, to whom I have referred, finds, as he says, ^^a partial explanation of these evils in a certain inadequacy and misdirection in popular education, as generally conducted until recently." I am so grateful for those last two words, "until re- cently" ; so glad that we are not left entirely without hope, but may fairly expect that at the end of two gen- erations more these evils ^ill all be removed by the sweet reasonableness of our people, attained through the new system of education which is now coming in, but to perfect which a few changes are deemed neces- sary. These changes, as proposed by the learned critic, are the following: "1st. Make the strengthen- ing of the reasoning power the constant object of all teaching. 2nd. Extend true observation studies — teach the natural sciences more — ^not in any common way, but by the laboratory methods, with constant use of the laboratory note-book. 3rd. Teach more history. 4th. Teach argumentative composition; and 5th. Teach political economy and sociology, not as in- formation subjects, but as training or disciplinary subjects." That is all. "These," says the distin- guished writer, "are some of the measures which we / AMERICAN PROGRESS 383 may reasonably hope may make .popular education in the future more successful than it has been in the pasty in developing universal reasonableness.'' To this I answer that, if our present evils are justly chargeable in any considerable degree to our defective methods of education, the proposed changes, if changes they be, are utterly inadequate as a remedy. But in reality one very essential element of the problem has been overlooked. Our country is vastly changed in almost every respect from what it was 70 years ago. While our education has greatly im- proved, the difficulties of the situation have increased a hundred fold. The country is different in its popu- lation; in its extent; in its industrial development; in its wealth; in its means of communication; in its I>ossibilities for gigantic combinations of capital for the control of natural products and for the accumu- laton of unheard of fortunes; in its possibilities for gigantic combinations of labor to control or embar- rass capital; in its occupation so that land is becom- ing more difficult to obtain ; in its machinery ; in its concentration of population in cities with all the at- tendant possibilities of municipal corruption ; in its public questions so far reaching and so disturbing that the questions of 70 years ago seem like child's play; in the higher and more comfortable life which is now universally demanded; and finally in the uni- versal unrest which the progress of civilization with its attendant possibilities has made inevitable. Is it any wonder, with all these changed conditions, that the people of this country of so many races but im- I)erfectly assimilated and millions who have never known our processes of education, are not able at once to deal ^ith all new questions with absolute and 884 AMERICAN PROGRESS unvarying reasonableness? What, we may ask, would be our situation to-day with our environment what it is, if we had not had popular education for the last 70 years? Because education does not enable a people to do everything with absolute reasonableness^ because in the clash of millions of conflicting inter- ests which will always be in contention among men^ whether they are educated or not, so long as they are selfish, shall we proceed to talk about popular educa- tion as a failure, or charge all existing evils to its de- fects? Or shall we delude ourselves with the idea that all these distracting questions which agitate our congress, our legislatures, our city governments, our courts, our labor organizations, our railroad cor- porations, our banks, our farmers, our day laborers,, everybody in brief, can be settled with a sweet rea-. sonableness by the emphasizing in our schools of some old studies and the introduction of the labora- tory note-book? Will the student trained under these not very startling educational changes, be able to play the Moses to our people, and lead them out of the darkness of Egypt, in which we are at present groaning, into the Canaan flowing with milk and honey of sweet reasonableness on all subjects, where tariffs and bimetalism and trusts, and social- ism and crimes and anarchy, shall float away, like Jordan into the Dead Sea, and disappear for- ever? The government of this country has recently changed hands. Certain issues were raised in the presidential campaign, and apparently the de- cision of the nation on those issues wa^ given in very emphatic terms. Yet the President with, I doubt not, the best intentions and the most sincere desire to do the right thing, hesitates to assemble Congress: AMERICAN PROGRESS 385 to remedy the evils which have been complained of; and he may well hesitate. No party can afford to make any mistake, not often can a party afford to make an experiment. Yet nobody can tell what the immediate effect of the legislation contemplated will be. How can any one tell, when there are elements in the problem that may change at any moment? The deficiency of rain fall or the excess of it in this coun* try or in other countries, might produce results that would, temi>orarily at least, make the proposed legis- lation successful or unsuccessful as the case might be. Nobody is absolutely sure as to what is best to be done, except that rather large company who know a great deal that isn't so. Now, a sweet reasonableness is, no doubt, a very fine thing. "Logic is logic," said Oliver Wendell Holmes, when his one horse shay Went to pieces all at once All at once and nothing first Just as the bubbles do when they burst because every part was equally strong. But nobody ever saw such a one horse shay, and nobody ever will see it. Justice is justice — ^and the legislator would be happy indeed, if he could make a tariff that would be equally just to everybody. But no such tariff was; ever made or ever will be made. A hundred barking dogs of passion, cupidity, greed, and i)olicy, make the air resound with their howls whenever their particu- lar interests are touched ; and one interest is so inter- woven with another that the disturbance of one en- dangers others that have not been thought of. The number of men who will approve a general principl(^ is much larger than the number of those who will approve a specific law to carry out the principle, Dif-^ 388 AMERICAN PROGRESS ferent statesmen with the same facts before them, reach different conclusions. On one side are Mr. Cleveland and Mr. Carlisley and on the other Mr. Harrison and Senator Sherman. These men are all patriotic. They all mean well. They all look at the same facts, bnt they draw differ- ent conclusions. All of these men have been trained in argumentative composition — indeed that is the strong point with them. They know something about the natural sciences, though I fear that they have never used the laboratory note-book. But with the exception of this, they have had all the things which are i>ointed out by our learned mentor as necessary to produce universal reasonableness, and yet they can not agree. Would they agree if they had had the com- plete training required? Do the students of any uni- versity in New England even all think alike on all subjects? But why should they not if they have been properly trained? Why should they not if they have been properly instructed in argumentative composi- tion and have used the laboratory note-book? In such a complicated social and industrial world as that in which we are now living there will be clashing and contention and unrest just so long as men are selfish, no matter how excellent may be our system of education. If you could make men every- where observe the golden rule, it would do more to promote the contentment and happiness of the world than all the changes in education conceivable. Dis- content, without hope of anything better, is, I grant, the deepest misery ; but discontent with hope of some- thing better, is not only consistent with the highest earthly happiness but is usually the concomitant of such happiness. I do not know that contentment ia AMERICAN PROGRESS 387 produced by education. . I do not know that it is de- sirable that it should be. Contentment is not the same as happiness. Shylock, after being robbed of his daughter and his ducats, after being judicially robbed of the rest of his property, and forced to accept a hated religion in place of his ancestral faith, is asked by the prosecutor, Portia, if he is contented, and he answers, '^I am content." Perhaps he was, since he had not been robbed of his life, as it seemed probable at one time that he would be; but he cer- tainly was not conspicuously happy. Paul said: "I have learned in whatsoever state I am therewith to be content." But he did not mean that he wanted to stay just where he was and be just what he was and nothing more. He meant simply that he had learned to accept without murmuring any con- dition in which he might be placed. But at the same time he had a desire for something, as he said, '^far better.'' A divine unrest, the moral i)ower which moves the world, promotes progress, and makes men ^'rise on stepping stones of their dead selves to higher things," moved him. He had not reached his highest point of progress — had not already attained or been made perfect. But he pressed on, pressed toward the goal. That is the law of spiritual progress. There is the same law of progress in civilization and in human life generally. The education which makes a man contented, or makes classes of people con- tented, or makes mankind contented, as long as they have not apprehended the best things, is in a degree, a failure. That education only is suc- cessful which awakens in man a noble discontent for the undeveloped present and an earnest longing for more i>erfect attainments. Carry the gospel to a 388 AMERICAN PROGRESS ravage, and the first evidence you have that it is doing the savage any good is an increase in his wants, a desire on his part to have more clothes and to be more decent. More and more, as he appreciates Christian- ity, will his desires enlarge, as new ideas of purity, beauty, harmony, peace, good-living enter his soul. If any one supposes that he can have a half-naked, lazy, dirty cannibal accept the gospel and remain a half-naked, lazy, dirty cannibal, he has a very poor idea of the gospel or a very exalted one of a lazy can- nibal. Stir the soul or the mind out of its lethargy and discontent is inevitable. When the unclean spirit goes out of a man and takes a walk, he does not on his return find the man the same as he left him. The man has been busy, striving after better things, and the apartments once occupied by the spirit are already "swept and gar- nished." Figurative, this, no doubt; but none the less real. Take a boy out of the slums of a big city. His knowledge is like that of an animal — a kind of instinct for supplying itself with food. Take him away from his old environment. Wash him, clothe him in decent apparel, stir his mind with new sights and new thoughts, teach him to read and write. Is he contented? No! Is he as contented as he was before you took him from the slums? No ! Why not? Because then he was blind and could not see the pos- sibilities open to men in this world. Then he had no hope or thought of ever living elsewhere than amid filth and sin. He is a great deal better off now. Yes; infinitely so. But now there stretch out before him possibilities so grand, futures so delightful, hopes of being and doing so much more than he is or can do now, that the God-given discontent with what he has AMERICAN PROGRESS 389 already achieved, pushes him on and on, beyond the common education, beyond common success in busi- ness, even to the utmost that human energy can se- cure. And is it not well? Is it not as it should be? If it is general contentment you are looking for, a contentment that is satisfied with things as they are, and does not desire further advancement, do not look for it among a people who have known free popu- lar education for seventy years, for you will not find it. And if you are educating all classes freely in the hope that education will make the humble classes contented to stay forever where they are, contented that other people shall rise in power and infiuence and comfort, while they remain in all these respects unchanged, you are greatly deceiving yourselves, for education will never make a people contented. Knowledge is as disturbing and disquieting to-day as it was in the Garden of Eden. Why was it that, in the palmy days of slavery, the slaveholders regarded it as such an incendiary proceeding to teach the slaves to read? Simply be- cause they understood that knowledge would breed discontent. The spelling book among the slaves was as dangerous as a torch in a powder mill. Look at the feudal lord, perched in his castle on some summit, with his armed followers to guard him, while his serfs live in huts at the foot of the castled hill. These serfs work for him. They oc- cupy his land. They get nothing out of life except the means to live at a poor dying rate. Now take knowledge to those serfs ; teach them history, science, ethics, rights, and how long will they stay in their miserable huts, the willing servants of their feudal lord? How long after you have shown them a better 390 AMERICAN PROGRESS life 08 possible for them before they will be seeking it? And is not that what we want? Is not that the very thing we ought to seek by means of education? The son of a barber became Lord Chancellor of England. A high-born acquaintance once alluded sneeringly to the humble origin of the Chancellor. "Yes, my father was a barber," replied the Chancellor, "and if your father had been a barber, you would have been a bar- ber, too." Which of these men was the better, the man who rose above his birthright, or the man who would not have arisen above it, however low it might have been? It has been the glory of our country, and I pray Gtod it may never cease to be the glory of our coun- try, that here men may rise by merit above the social condition in which they are born. Our free public education is not intended to make grades and classes of society, from father to son, content with that station which it has pleased Providence to assign them. On the contrary, it is intended to quicken the intellect and to stir the ambition of every child which it reaches, so that there may be continual movement from one grade of society to another, per- petual currents purifying and energizing society, as the winds and the waves keep the mighty ocean for- ever in action, and so more equable in temperature and more pure. A favored class of nobility in some countries, who own everything, may desire a sys- tem of education which will make the masses forever contented to own nothing, and they do desire it. But that is not what education is for in the United States. It is intended not more to teach all men their rights than to awaken in all men a desire and a determina- tion to secure their rights. In this country it can AMERICAN PROGRESS 391 never wrong any man to allow to all other men the rights which belong to them. And the people that are not content, because they haye not attained to the best things possible, will be happy in this very dis- content, if only they are advancing towards the things which they desire, happy in the seeking, happy in their sense of progress, to be made supremely happy some- time and somewhere, in their perfect development. -26 AGRICULTURAL EDUCATION ♦ Mr. President and Gentlemen of the State Horticul- tural Society: I have accepted your kind invitation to speak to you this evening, not for the purpose of delivering a literary address or a treatise on horticulture, but in order to say a few things respecting agricultural education, which I think it is well for the state that I should say and say now. It has been my good fortune to become reasonably well acquainted with your purposes and investiga- tions through the annual reports which you have published, and I come before you to-night with a very sincere respect for you and your work. You have taken hold' of that department of agriculture which most imperatively requires special attention here in Minnesota, and which, more than any other, needs the aid of science and the teachings of ex- perience. You have prosecuted this work with a zeal worthy of all commendation, and with a meas- ure of success for which the entire state ought to be grateful. Many of the papers published in the record of your proceedings are worthy of careful *An address delivered before the State Horticultural Society in the Hall of the House of Representatives at St. Paul, Minnesota, January 19th, 1887. An attempt was making at this time to separate the Agricultural College from the University. 394 AGRICULTURAL EDUCATION study; and those are not wanting which show the writers to be as refined in taste and as sensible to beauty and as appreciative of the utility of beauty, as the most cultured literary artists. Such a paper is that by Mr. J. S. Harris, in the Model Farmer's Garden, in which occurs a description of what a farmer's home should be, which, if realized to any considerable extent, would add not a little to the happiness of farmers and their families. But, gen- tlemen, you have done much more than to publish excellent papers. But a few years ago it was sup- posed that Minnesota was too cold for the success- ful cultivation of fruit. But you thought otherwise. You experimented and persisted in your experiments when the results were most discouraging. By your wise i)erseverance and intelligent skill you have made Minnesota the prize bearer of the nation for excel- lence of apples; you have made it almost the peer of any in the abundance and deliciousness of grapes ; you have made strawberries, the most luscious of all small fruits, not only plenty, but of great variety and of the highest excellence; while every table in Minnesota is a debtor to you for a variety of food produced here at home, and most conducive to comfort and to health. In the prosecution of this work the names of Gideon, Pierce, Harris, Elliot, and others whom I need not mention, have become as familiar as household words in connection with the work of this society, and as benefactors of the state. If I can not directly participate in your coun- sels or assist you in your work, I can at least appreci- ate the value of your work. And I especially de- sire that, as I speak to you to-night, you shall not look upon me, with a kind of pity, as a mere theorist AGRICULTURAL EDUCATION 395 who knows nothing about the mysteries of practical agriculture. It is true that even a theorist may reach his conclusions from a larger induction than the practical man, and so the geologist may be a safer guide in mining than is the practical miner. But I am not even a theorist. My early years were spent on a farm, where I became familiar in a prac- tical way with the whole routine of a farmer's life, including what will some day be more important in Minnesota than it appears to be regarded now, ro- tation of crops, and the care and feeding of cattle for beef as well as for dairy purposes. I learned how to do things by doing them. I know perfectly well what a farmer*s life is; what his work is; and I believe I know what his needs are so far as they relate to education and preparation for his work. This is my only justification for appearing before you at all. While I recognize the fact that the field of knowledge is too wide for any man to be familiar with the whole of it, and, while I appreciate the fact that you undoubtedly know vastly more than I about agriculture, I yet modestly hope to lead you along certain lines of thought which will pay for the time and attention which you may give me. I propose to speak upon the subject of agricultural education. I shall first notice very briefly the his- torical progress of agriculture. I shall then inquire what has been done for agricultural education in Minnesota, and finally I shall try to show what is needed for the future. If we examine carefully the history of agricul- ture, we shall be impressed with the very great sim- plicity and crudeness of the agencies employed in early times to aid the farmer in his work; we shall 396 AGRICULTURAL EDUCATION be astonished at the slow progress made among the Greeks and Romans, and in the medieval ages in Europe generally ; and in all the world, down even to a comparatively recent time; and we shall be de- lighted at the rapid strides which agriculture has made in the last half century, not only in respect to machines employed to save human labor, but also in the understanding of scientific principles and their application to farming. It is noticeable that the rapid and marked improvement in agriculture dates from the time when agricultural societies be- gan to be formed. Some of the societies formed at the beginning of the new era are in existence to-day, and it can not be doubted that the discussions and experiments of these societies have done much to bring on the age of mighty production and of sys- tematic economy in human muscle. At all events, through the publications of these societies it has come to pass, directly or indirectly, that the world has had the benefit of all the good ideas which have been originated by observers or thinkers. This com- munity of ideas, so characteristic of our age, is one great cause of human progress, not merely in agri- culture, but in all departments of knowledge. It is no longer one man thinking for himself alone that measures the progress of the race. It is rather mul- titudes of men thinking for humanity — ^all eager to share their thoughts and discoveries with one an- other, and to publish them to the world. Under this stimulus grains have been improved in quality and vastly increased in quantity; fruits have been multiplied in varieties, and made better in flavor; vegetables have been made to assume unheard of proportions; cattle of improved breeds have taken AGRICULTURAL EDUCATION 397 the place of the stunted and unprofitable specimens of former timesy and the dairy has become a most tremendous . contributor to human comfort ; while the horse has been developed in speed and beauty beyond anything known to our ancestors. And still the work of subduing the earth, so essential to hu- man welfare everywhere, goes on with almost bound- less promise for the future. It would almost seem, indeed, as if the wants of the world would be rapidly met, and a great surplus of unneeded products would result from the vastly increased power of labor; but experience proves that there is no new idea of real value and no new force of real power for which the world can not make room, however well mankind may seem to have been provided for before. It is no longer a ques- tion of mere existence with the human race. It is a question of how much comfort, and even luxury, mankind can have in addition to the necessaries of life. We no longer think of famine as possible, since it has been clearly shown that there is nourishment enough in the bosom of mother earth to feed all her children for ages to come. And the increase in the production of food has not been the result of the employment of a proportionally increased number of laborers, but of the application of machinery to work instead of human muscles. Thus the labor of the world is not unduly expended in the direct pro- duction of food, but it is applied in larger and larger measures to the manufacture of the myriad arti- cles which the genius of man has invented for hu- man comfort and which, from being the luxuries of the rich, are fast becoming the necessaries of the I)oor. Whatever adds to the productive power of 398 AGRICULTURAL EDUCATION labor, adds to the sum of human comfort, and es- pecially increases the number of those who can haye this comfort. We are, therefore, under the greatest obligations to those searchers after truth who ex- plore the dark places of nature's domain, and bring to light new forces for the service of man. But with the advance in agriculture and the rec- ognition of a scientific method in agriculture, the old idea that anybody can be a farmer and that as likely as not education will unfit a man for a farmer's life, has, to a considerable extent, passed away, and there has come instead a demand for agricultural education. This demand is sensible and proper. The supply ought to equal the. demand. And it does. No person who desires an agricultural education need go without it because it can not be had. The trouble thus far has been that, while a clamor is raised for agricultural education, the boys to be educated are not forthcoming, and to educate there must be per- sons to receive the education. Up to the present time the demand for agricultural education in Minnesota can not be said to have been very great, and I have no hesitation in saying that the supply has been largely in excess of the demand. And if, at the pres- ent moment, the demand seems to anybody to be greater than the supply, I answer, in the language of the market reports, that "the demand is mainly speculative and not for consumption." And I add, in the language of the Declaration of Independence, "to prove tliis, let facts be submitted to a candid world." In the first place it is to be observed that the Regents of the University have not been negligent in the matter of providing facilities for agricultural AGRICULTURAL EDUCATION 399 education. C!onsider for a moment what they have done. The endowment of a university in Minnesota was begun in 1851 by the act of C!ongress granting two townships of land for the purpose. The territorial legislature i>assed an act in 1851 for the establish- ment of the University. The state constitution adopted in 1857 confirmed the previous action and expressly provided for the vesting in the University of all lands which may hereafter be granted by Con- gress or other donations for university purposes. For reasons too well known to be repeated here, the University was not really organized and put into operation till 1869. Thus eighteen years elapsed be- tween the time of the first grant for the University by Congress and .the organization of a faculty for university work. At first the Regents very properly made provision for the education that was most needed and demanded. Full provision was made for instruction in science, literature, and arts. For years the provision thus made was sufficient for the wants of the state. As schools and scholarship in the state improved, the work in the University was raised, preparatory classes were dropped, till now only one remains and its days are numbered. Later came the organization of the College of Mechanic Arts, and of the College of Agriculture. Up to this time the sons of farmers, like the sons of everybody else, had had free permission to enter every class room in the University for which they were prepared. Now they were permitted to have in junior and senior years special instruction in agriculture in addition to all the other privileges of the University. In other words, a special college of agriculture, with a two 400 AGRICULTURAL EDUCATION years' course, was established, to enter which a stu- dent must have piirsued the college course during the two preceding years. In due time, a]so, the Regents, in order to fulfill their trust and to do all that was possible for the agricultural education, bought a farm near the Uni* versity, for the practical experimental work. When the present professor of agriculture came to the state^ he found the farm unsuited to its intended use, and upon his recommendation the Regents sold the farm^ and with the proceeds of the sale purchased the pres- ent experimental farm, erected thereon a model house and bam, placed upon the farm a variety of stock, recreated — so to speak — the whole farm, so that at the present time it is a most admirable tract of land, a beautiful specimen of what it is possible for a Minnesota farm to be; without a weed in its cul- tivated parts, and with a rich covering of grass where formerly not a blade was growing. In bringing the farm to its present condition and present fitness for experimental work, and in meeting the requirements of the department of agriculture, the Regents have expended many thousands of dollars; and they have spent year by year far more for the department of agriculture than they have spent for any other de- partment whatever, and they have done this with a very sincere desire to improve agriculture and to benefit the farmers. If this liberal policy has not been appreciated,, if students have not come to the College of Agri- culture, if there has been practically no demand what- ever for agricultural education, it is not because the Regents have failed in their duty, not because they have not made generous provision for this edu- AGRICULTURAL EDUCATION 401 cation, not because they have not been willing to do everything which large-minded men could do to pro- mote 80 great an interest as the agriculture of Min* nesota. And I wish to say here that, if the Regents, have not accomplished directly for agriculture as much as might be desired, as much as they desired^ they have at least proved themselves wise trustees of the property intrusted to their care ; for they have converted property which originally cost them only 18,000 into property which could easily be sold to- day for 1250,000, while the fruit farm at Minnetonka,. purchased for |2,000, could be sold now for f30,000. If anyone can show anywhere more profitable farm- ing than that, let us by all means know where it is. But the Regents have not stopped even here. In their zeal to meet the wants of the farmers of the state, they have consented to impair somewhat the symmetry of the University, and have opened spe- cially easy paths by which students can enter the department of agriculture, and they have done this by my advice. When I came to the University a little more than two years ago, I found one student registered in the College of Agriculture. He graduated at the end of the year, and the second year of my administra- tion opened without a single pupil in agriculture. You will believe me, gentlemen, when I say that I pondered upon the subject long and earnestly. I became satisfied that two things were clear; first,, that the actual demand for special education in agri- culture was very slight, as shown by the fact that in a great agricultural state with its tens of thou- sands of farmers, not one farmer's son appeared ta ask for instruction in agriculture, while hundreds 402 AGRICULTURAL EDUCATION of farmers' sons and daughters came to the Uni- versity to ask for instraction in other things. Sec- ond, that the children of the state who desired edu- cation at all, would take the highest education that they could get If, therefore, they once fitted them- selves in the high schools to enter the regular courses of the University, they would keep on as long as they could in the lines of their preparatory work in the schools, that is, in languages, mathematics, and mental, physical, natural, and economic science. In the full tide of successful and joyous scholarship, with it49 aliQOSt infinite possibilities for the future, very few students would ever wish to turn aside to study practical agriculture. Under these circum- stances, I thought I saw clearly that either there would be no students in agriculture, or some special inducements must be held out for persons to take that course. As we could not divert any of the stream of students pouriug into the University into the Col- lege of Agriculture, the only thing to be done was to tap the stream nearer its source before the current set too strong in the present direction ; >and this we did. We have opened the doors of the College of Agriculture to students who would not and could not enter the regular courses of study as heretofore guarded. We have provided that students may enter the College of Agriculture upon passing an exami- nation in geography, United States history, arith- metic, English grammar and composition — ^five of the eleven subjects required for admission to the other departments of the University — ^and, as a result, we have this year four regular students in agriculture, not one of whom could have entered under the old arrangement. AGRICULTURAL EDUCATION 403 lint for the agitation of the question of separat- ing the College of Agriculture from the University, I have good reasons for believing we should have had five times as many. Bo long as this agitation goes on it is impossible to work with the confidence in the future necessary for the highest success; and no special efforts, beyond a statement of the facts, have been made to secure pupils for this course the present year. If we are permitted to go forward with our experiment, I do not doubt its success. I am certain that our present plan of starting the agri- cultural department lower down in the course of study than heretofore is the correct one. I am confirmed in this by the deliberate judgment of William H. Brewer, professor of agriculture in Yale College; and I am confident that our present plan will commend itself thoroughly to every intelligent and fair-minded farmer who will examine it. Under this plan the studies pursued by the agricultural stu- dent to entitle him to graduate as a bachelor of agri- culture are the following: agriculture, horticulture, botany, chemistry, agricultural chemistry, natural philosophy, anatomy, physiology and hygiene, en- tomology, geology, mineralogy, practical mathemat- ics, drawing, algebra, geometry, trigonometry, sur- veying, shop work, history, zoology, English, political science, veterinary science, and rhetoric. I submit that the student who does good work in all these branches fairly earns his degree; and that the Uni- versity need not be ashamed to confer a degree for this work, nor the student be ashamed to receive the degree which represents this work. The Regents have thus made it possible for any farmer's son who has a good common school educa- 404 AGRICULTURAL EDUCATION tion to enter the College of Agricnlture. Besides this they permit him to take any studies in the other departments of the University for which he may be fitted and which he may desire to take. Is it pos- sible to make the situation more comfortable or more inviting for the farmer's boy than it is? If so, will yon, gentlemen, please to tell me how. But the Regents have not stopped even here. De- termined, if possible, to make the farm of service in the way of education, they last year authorized the formation "of a class in practical agriculture" to be composed of boys who pass no examinations and who receive pay for the work they do. Ten boys were in this class last summer. It was an experiment to see what degree of eagerness would be shown for practical ediication so much demanded. It is plainly not the kind of work for the University to do, but the experiment has answered its purpose. Mean: while, to fully carry out the design of Congress in passing the agricultural land grant bill, the Regents have done all that lay in their power to perfect the organization and equipment of the College of Me- chanic Arts, all of whose privileges, instruction, and apparatus are at the service of the students of agri- culture, if desired. A visit to the new building, an examination of the machinery and apparatus, even a slight observation of the work done there, and an examination of the regulations for admission will show most clearly to any one that the Regents have been most faithful to their trust and have made most ample provisions for the education of students in the department of mechanic arts, while they have not made it difficult for the people intended to be benefited to enter the institution. I can not go into AGRICULTURAL EDUCATION 405 particulars at this point as I shoald like to. All I can say now is, come and see the building and equipment for the College of Mechanic Arts and judge for yourselves. Finally^ as the mountain would not come to Ma- homet and therefore Mahomet went to the mountain, so the Regents determined that if the farmers' sons would not come to the College of Agriculture, the College of Agriculture, in part at least, should go to them. Farmers' institutes were accordingly es- tablished and more than thirty of them have been held. They have done good. But they can be made much better and more helpful even than they have been, and, in a practical way, can accomplish more for farming than anything else that can be done. I have no doubt that they will be heartily sustained by the farmers of the state, and, as a result, I have no doubt that hundreds of farmers' sons will be in- duced to seek further knowledge in the College of Agriculture, while thousands of farmers who know nothing about the technicalities of science, will grasp the practical conclusions and apply them successfully to their farm work. If a farmer knows that by in- creasing his expenditure twenty per cent, in a cer- tain way he can increase the product of his farm fifty per cent., he can work out the problem success- fully, whether he knows how to analyze his soil or his fertilizers or not. But while great practical good can be done by the institutes under the direction of the College of Agriculture, the real work of the college, the education of students, must be done at the University. If the farmer boys will avail themselves of the opportunity offered and enter into the regular work of the College of Agriculture, I 406 AGRICULTURAL EDUCATION promiBe them an education that will fit them to be not only good farmers, but good and influential citi- zens of our republic. That, gentlemen, is the pres- ent situation so far as the Ck>llege of Agriculture is concerned and so far as it relates to its provisions for agricultural education. We are making an ex- periment, and, if we are permitted to go on without disturbance, I believe the experiment will be suc- cessful. And if it is possible, it will save the state from further temptation to multiply colleges and unnecessarily to duplicate the agencies for education. It is claimed by those who insist that the Agri- cultural College should be separated from the Uni- versity, that no college of agriculture connected with a university has educated any considerable number of agricultural students, while colleges of agricul- ture which are separate have educated a large num- ber. An appeal is thus made to experience. I am not a little surprised that gentlemen as intelligent as many of those are who advance these arguments should be deceived by mere names. You can call a theological seminary an agricultural college if you please, but that does not make it one. You can call a common school, or even a high school, a college, but that does not make it one. You can call a high school or college for general education with an agri- cultural attachment an agricultural college, but that does not in any just sense make it one. Suppose, for example, that to-morrow the legislature of Min- nesota should vote to change the name of the Uni- versity of Minnesota and to call it the Agricultural College of Minnesota, what would be the result? We should go on with our work just as we do now. We should endeavor to give our students a good educa- AGRICULTURAL EDUCATION 407 tion. We should train them in the same subjects which we are teaching now. The larger portion of our students would then^ as now^ take the scientific course^ and in that course they would learn those sciences upon a knowledge of which, in some meas- ure, success in agriculture depends. More than half of our students would thus be engaged in laying the foundation of a scientific knowledge of agriculture, just as they are doing now. The University would be an agricultural college — ^so-called — with three or four hundred students, but not one more student would be studying agriculture than are studying it now. It would be a successful institution and would have scholars and would be referred to as what a success a separate college of agriculture could be made, while, in reality, its success would not be owing in the least to its being an agricultural college in any just sense, but to its being a great deal more than an agricul* tural college. Its students would be there to gain general knowledge and not mainly to study agricul- ture. And I assert, without fear of successful con- tradiction, that wherever a so-called successful agri- cultural college exists in this country to-day the thing which attracts students to it is not the fact that it is agricultural, but the fact that it is a great deal besides that and the further fact that it is possible to enter this agricultural college — so-called — ^with much less preparation than would be required to en- ter institutions that do not call themselves agricul- tural.* Take, for example, the Iowa State Agricultural *This was true in 1887. It is not true in 1910. To-day the thing which attracts students to the Agricultural College is the fact that it is agricultural. -27 408 AGRICULTURAL EDUCATION College at Ames. Its faculty embraces professors in ethics, psychology, the history of civilization, Eng- lish, Latin, history, mathematics, political economy, pathology-, histology, therapeutics, comparative anat- omy, civil engineering, mechanical engineering, chem- istry, zodlogy, physics, astronomy, elocution, rhetoric, drawing, painting, music, besides those strictly agri- cultural. I think I am correct in saying that the annual expense of the college is greater than that of the whole university of Minnesota. And the require- ments for admission to the freshman class of this college at Ames are substantially the same as for our subfreshman class in the agricultural course, and not equal in amount to half the requirements for ad- mission to our subfreshman class in other depart- ments. In other words, a boy who could not pass the examinations to the upper classes of a Minne- sota high school can enter the freshman class of the Iowa Agricultural College with its twenty-seven pro- fessors and instructors. Is it not easy to see why students go to an agricultural college under such circumstances? It is a new process of getting a high education — agoing to college without the trouble of fitting for college. What is the use of cheating our- selves in this way by calling things by their wrong names? Then there is the Agricultural College at Brook- ings, Dakota. I have heard it repeatedly referred to as a triumphant proof that a separate agricultural college would succeed when one connected with a state university would not, because, forsooth, there were two hundred students at Brookings, presumably agricultural students, while we had next to none AGRICULTURAL EDUCATION 409 in our College of Agricnlture in Minnesota. But I had an interview with one of the gentlemen engaged in managing the so-called agricultural college at Brookings and I received new light on the matter. Of the two hundred students only three or four were studying agriculture at all. The rest have rushed into Brookings as they would to any other place where a better school than could be found at home was established, and they are going to school at Brookings with no more special thought of agricul- ture than have the boys and girls of Minnesota when they go to a high school or a normal school, or a col- lege or university not agricultural. The Agricultural College of Mississippi, so often referred to as having large numbers of students, has a plenty of students for the same reason — ^the absence of other desirable institutions of learning. Even at Ames Agricultural College, I have been grossly misinformed if a large majority of the students do not take special pains to emphasize the fact that, though in an agricultural college, they are not agricultural students. Now the simple fact patent in all this is that just so far as an agricultural college gives a good education in things generally, while at the same time it is easy to enter because the requirements for ad- mission are low, it will have students. It is not in other words, agriculture, nor the desire to study agriculture, which controls the large majority of stu- dents who go to agricultural colleges ; it is education in its wide and real sense, the desire to get this edu- cation if possible and the feeling that if they get it at all they must go where they can enter. Now this education in its fulness, in better form and with more thoroughness than any agricultural 410 AGRICULTURAL EDUCATION college can possibly give it in Minnesota for years to come, we are actually giving all the time in the University. We offer it, including Instruction in agricultural science, to all who are ready to receive it. Whose fault is it if the majority of students choose to grad- uate as bachelors of science with the scientific knowl- edge required in agriculture, and not as bachelors of agriculture, without the linguistic and mathemat- ical knowledge which all students need? Are not these students wise in fitting themselves first for influential citizenship? And what possible use can there be in multiplying colleges, when we already have all that the work to be done requires? Gen- tlemen, I will be perfectly plain, even at the risk of incurring your displeasure. There is no need of a distinctively agricultural education so large as to make work for a separate college. Strip these agri- cultural colleges of the subjects which every high school or college, not agricultural, must teach and does teach, and what a miserable skeleton of a cur- riculum or course of study you would have left!* One great danger, and one that, as a state, we ought carefully to avoid, is the unnecessary dupli- cation of educational institutions for the same work. The University and the normal schools ought not to do work which the high schools can do. It has been necessary in the past for them to do some of this work, but they ought to relinquish it just as fast as the high schools become able to do it. They are *This was true in 1887 when this address was given; bnt agri- cnltnre became a real science in the next twenty years, and now fur- nishes material for study through an entire college course, if one desires to study agricultural sciences exclusively. AGRICULTURAL EDUCATION 411 moving now in the right direction^ and soon^ it is to be hoped that the University will do only proper college work, and the normal sehools will be largely relieved of grammar school work, and will do their proper work more exclusively — the fitting of scholars to teach. So, to maintain two universities or colleges, having essentially the same coarse of disciplinary studies, and differing only in that one has a special trend towards agriculture, is a waste of the public revenue, and ought not to be thought of. And I go further than this. If we are to have a university worthy of the state, we must make it the seat of all the higher learning fostered and maintained by the state. If a school of mining and metallurgy is needed, it should be at the University. Bo of every other special school in the interest of the higher education. For all these the library of the University, like the heart in the human body, can serve to send life to every part. Laboratories, collections of specimens, museums, all can be made serviceable without ad- ditional expense, as could not be the case if a school of mining is to be in one place, a school of botany in another, and so on. It is by concentration at one point, of the educational forces and material, and not by separation and a weak duplication of forces, that great universities are built up. Surely we are in sufficient peril from the multiplication of colleges here, without the state adding to our peril by adopt- ing a policy of division and weakness. The one science which, more than all others, is especially serviceable to agriculture is agricultural chemistry, using this term in its widest sense, as embracing the whole science of vegetable and animal production. As the object of agriculture is to "raise 412 AGRICULTURAL EDUCATION from the soil as large a quantity as possible of use- ful vegetable products, or indirectly, of animal prod- ucts," it is very evident that the farmer who does anything more than in a blind way to trust to nature for his crops, must understand the composition of plants, of animals, and of soils. True, very many men without scientific knowledge succeed as farmers^ because by experience and observation, their own or other people's, they have reached substantially the same conclusions as those reached by science. But if boys are to be taught how to become good farmers^ — ^better farmers than their fathers, — ^it must be by the scientific training, and not merely by experience. Now for this scientific training in agricultural chem- istry, the most important, the alMmx)ortant scientific subject, what need of a separate college with its new buildings, new laboratories, new library, new appara- tus and material, and new professors, when now, a^ things are, without a dollar's additional expense, the whole science of agricultural chemistry can be taught in our present laboratories, and taught, too, under the direction of a professor as accomplished as he is modest, a graduate of Harvard University, and a stu- dent in both England and Oermany; when, too, a practical application of the principles of science can be made on the university farm, especially selected on account of its admirably diversified soil. It is not because I happen to be president of the University that I opx)ose the establishment of a sepa- rate College of Agriculture. The separation of the College of Agriculture from the University would not impair the usefulness of the University in other di- rections, unless, indeed, the state, burdened with the support of two institutions, should withdraw its sup- AGRICULTURAL EDUCATION 413 port from the University and thus stop it in its career of progress upon which it has faiilj entered and to which it challenges attention. I do not understand that the most earnest advocate of separation desires to impair the power and usefulness of the University. But I oppose the establishment of a separate college of agriculture, as a citizen of the state. I oppose it because it will involve a needless expenditure of money to establish it, and a much larger expenditure of money to carry it on every year than will be re- quired for doing the same work in the University al- ready established. I oppose it because it involves heavier taxes without corresponding benefits. I op- pose it because it is unnecessary and, if established, will never accomplish what its supporters hope. I oppose it finally because we are in the midst of an experiment with the College of Agriculture and it remains to be seen whether or not we can meet both the wants and the demands of the farmers. I have only to add that whenever it shall be proved that some other arrangement than the present will be more beneficial, I for one shall heartUy welcome the new arrangement. It is a noticeable fact that, in one particular, farmers are unlike the persons engaged in most other occupations. While we find trades unions of every kind carefully guarding against an over-supply of laborers in their particular departments and so against too many apprentices learning the trade, farmers, on the other hand, seem to be anxious to swell the numbers in their own ranks and to be fear- ful not that too many boys will become farmers but that too few will do so. They seem to be annoyed that any other occupations than farming should prove 414 AGRICULTURAL EDUCATION attractive to farmers' boys. I do not qaite under- stand the reason of this. It seems to be more a mat- ter of sensitive pride in their own occupation than the result of any broad views of utility or of political economy. But be that as it may, I shall regard it as a sad day for the country when the ranks of the pro- fessions and of trade and of manufacturing and of banking can no longer be recruited from the sturdy and energetic and honest sons of farmers in the country. The best blood in all lines of activities in our large cities has come from the country and from the homes of farmers. Long may it be so; and far distant be the day when through any compulsion, so- cial or physical, esoteric or exoteric, the sons of farm- ers shall be shut up to an education purely agricul- tural, and be forced, against their own taste and inclination, to follow the occupation of their fathers. As the mingling of nationalities and creeds and pur- poses and tastes helps the process of assimilation in our national life, so the mixing of families in different pursuits keeps all out of a rut, and adds to the life and activity of the whole. When, then, farmers com- plain that so many farmers' sons go into other pur- suits than farming, they complain of what is for the best good of all concerned. What we need to look out for is not lest farmers' sons should go into other pro- fessions, but lest farmers, whether the sons of farm- ers or not, should be uneducated and unfit for their work. And in this view of the case, so long as the sons of farmers can receive the benefits of the educa- tion in the state provided for the sons of all other classes of people, and can receive special agricultural education besides, if they desire it, I see no reason for sensitiveness on the part of farmers because they AGRICULTURAL EDUCATION 415 have not a separate college provided for the educa- tion of their sons^ isolated and segregated from the rest of the people of the state. Such isolation, such education of a class of people apart from others is undesirable and would be unhappy in its results even to those for whose benefit it is sought I know that the problem of agricultural educa- tion is one of the most difficult of all educational problems, because back of it is a host of people who do not expect to go to the college for an education, and yet insist that in some way the college shall bene- fit them, help them to do better work and to get larger returns. How the wishes of this large class can be met, except by the publication of the results of ex- periments, by the holding of farmers' institutes in all parts of the state, and by the education of stu- dents who, as practical farmers, shall be examples of skilled workers in agriculture, I do not at present see. If there be other practicable methods, I am not un- willing to recognize them, for no one, I am sure, can more heartily desire to do all in his power to promote the interests of agriculture and of the farmers of Min- nesota than I. Gentlemen, we must have certainty and stability in counsels in order to insure the successful progress of educational work. We can not plan wisely and put our plans into execution energetically, if it is to be a matter of uncertainty every time the legislature meets whether we are to continue in existence as a University or are to be mutilated and shorn of some of our departments. We are doing well at present, but we can not rest on what we have done; we can not be content with what we are doing, without rapid- ly falling behind our sister states. The noble science 416 AGRICULTURAL EDUCATION hally just bailt by Kansas ; the |200,000 appropriated by the last legislature of Wisconsin for a fire-proof building to replace the science hall consumed by fire ; ^the liberal appropriation of Nebraska for the depart- ment of botany, as well as for others ; the steady on- ward march of Michigan's great university, all warn us that a liberal policy towards the Uniyersity of Minnesota is necessary if we are to maintain the honorable reputation we have won, or are to keep pace with the education of our neighbors. The state of Minnesota has many things of which she may justly be proud. Her territory is a royal domain of magnificent proportions. Her soil is of surprising fertility ; her climate is most invigorating. Her people are enterprising, enthusiastic, united. Her rapid progress in material development, in popula- tion, in wealth commands the attention, ^he admira- tion, the wonder of the whole country. Beyond her is a territory stretching from the Mississippi to the Pacific, the future home of millions, whose wealth will pour itself an endless fiood into her borders. The state, so great in material resources, is hardly less great in her liberal provision for education. She ought to feel pride in her highest institution, her university. What, then, shall the University of Min- nesota be to the state of Minnesota? Shall it be a real university, or shall it be dismembered and divid- ed, one part here and another there? Shall it be a university or a confederacy of high schools? Shall it be to Minnesota what Harvard University has been to Massachusetts, Yale to Connecticut, and Princeton to New Jersey, the university of the state and thus of national reputation, or shall it be one of the uni- versities of Minnesota and so unknown beyond the AGRICULTURAL EDUCATION 41T state? It is not the UDiyersity of the regents wha govern it, nor of the faculty who teach in it. It is the nniversity of the state of Minnesota. To the state of Minnesota, therefore, I look with confidence for such wise and liberal action as shall preserve the University from mutilation, shall enable it to keep abreast of the age in its learning and teaching, and shall make it an institution where all sound learning may be gained, where the rich and the poor may meet together on equal terms and may secure an education good enough for the highest while not too^ good for the lowest And for the accomplishment of this I appeal to you, gentlemen, as intelligent mem- bers of the most i)owerful body of workers in the commonwealth, to give it your hearty and effective support. ADDRESS ON AGRICULTURE * The Agricultural Fair of Minnesota which opens to-day is without doubt the most notable agricultural fair held anywhere in the country. In the variety and excellence of its exhibits and in the number of people who visit it, this Fair has no equal. To visit the Fair is at once a pleasant recreation and a means of education, not only for the farmers, but for all citizens who are interested in the welfare of the state. The prosperity of Minnesota is dependent in so large a degree tipon its agriculture that uo one, whatever may be his occupation, can afford to be in- different to the success of this great industry. And it is for this reason that the Fair is annually visited by so many thousands who are not engaged in farm- ing. The Fair has an ideal location between the Twin Cities and in close proximity to the Experiment Sta- tion and the agricultural department of the Univer- sity. Ample provision can be made by the cities for the entertainment and comfort of visitors however numerous, and opportunity is afforded alike to see what the farmers of the state are doing as shown by the wonderful display of farm products both vege- table and animal, and to become familiar with the equipment of the Experiment Station and the meth- ^Delivered at the Minnesota State Agricnltnral Fair, September 2nd, 1907. 420 ADDRESS ON AGRICULTURE ods of investigation and experiment there pursued. The great variety of farm products on exhibition of s, very superior character is a just occasion for pride not only to the farmers but to all the people of Min- nesota. And the not inconsiderable influence which the work of the Exjieriment Station has had in placing the farming of the state upon a scientific basis and making possible such a display as we see around us, is a tribute both to the wisdom of the na- tional government in its liberal appropriations for the establishment and support of Experiment Sta- tions and to the ability and zeal of the officers of the station through which knowledge of the most val- uable character has been disseminated in all parts of the state. The willingness shown by the farmers to follow the methods pointed out by the scientists of the Experiment Station as wise, is a matter for hearty congratulation and has much to do with the enor- mously increased wealth and production of Minne- sota in the last few years. The prosperity of a nation depends upon two things: the character of its people and the produc- tive industry of its people. A people of high char- acter will cherish high ideals and will make laws that shall operate impartially in the interest of all. If to this be added high productive industry, it means a general dissemination of wealth with comfort and X)ossible happiness for all. Poverty, vagrancy, hun- ger are all unnecessary among such a people and, if found at all, they will be justly attributable, not to the laws and not to the conditions either social or economic, but to the negligence, idleness, or waste of those who suffer these things. Of course men who enter into business for themselves take risks and ADDRESS ON AGRICULTURE 421 may be unfortunate and fail, and, as a consequence, may suffer much inconvenience and experience much unhappiness. Neither high character nor general prosperity can insure success in business to any man who has not the qualifications necessary for con- ducting the business. And as a fact we are told that a very large percentage of those who engage in busi- ness do fail; the lesson of which is that every man should qualify himself for the business which he undertakes. This is no less true of the farmer than of the man of any other occupation. Fortunately much of our land is rich and the most unintelligent farmer who is not sparing of his labor, can hardly fail to derive at least a comfortable living from moth- er earth. But his more intelligent neighbor, by his superior knowledge of soils and their adaptation to various crops, may harvest wealth from land no rich- er than the other's which produces a bare living. This is an immense country. It has taken nearly three centuries to bring it to its present measure of cultivation. Millions of immigrants have come to secure cheap lands, and it has been possible to be fairly comfortable without careful and scientific farming. But the day when this is i)ossible is fast passing away. The public lands are rapidly passing into the hands of individual owners. The rich lands of the West for which so many farmers have aban- doned less productive farms in New England and New York, are not now to be had for the asking as they once were ; and it is now a live question in New England and especially in New York, how the aban- doned farms can be reclaimed and made to add their just share to the production of the country. This can only be accomplished by scientific farming and 422 ADDRESS ON AGRICULTURE more and more the demand for this kind of farming must come in every part of the country. As popula- tion multiplies — and ours is multiplying at almost an alarming rate — and as public lands disappear from the market^ the struggle for existence will grow more strenuous, and the only hope for the coming generations lies in the possibility of making the land yield two or three times what it does now. To bring about such a possibility will require all the aid that science can render to progressive farmers who are ready to accept new discoveries and to carry on their farming as the latest principles of science shall direct. Very striking examples of what science has already done to increase and improve production might be drawn from the departments of general agriculture and horticulture. But I think the most convincing of all are furnished by the dairy depart- ment. There has been such improvement in the last fifteen years in the selection and feeding of cattle and in the various processes for making butter as amounts to a revolution. When I came to Minnesota in 1884 it was hard to get good butter. Bad butter, very bad butter was common enough. To-day it is easy to get all the good butter you want Indeed, if there is any bad butter in Minnesota, I do not know where it comes from. I have not seen any for several years. When I was a boy on the farm, a cow was a cow ; no attention was paid to the breed. Indeed there was no breed. Cows were just cows. They were pastured in summer and fed on hay in winter. Nobody had any ideas about the relation of food to milk. Cows were fed to keep them in comfortable condition and they gave what milk they chose to. Nobody knew anything about relative amounts of butter-fat in the ADDRESS ON AGRICULTURE 423 milk or of protein in the feed. Some cows were profitable and some nnprofitable, but, as the milk of all of them went into one receptacle, no special notice of the difference was taken. And if the heifers raised proved to be good for batter, and the food given proved to be the kind required, it was very largely a matter of good luck and not of wisdom based on knowledge. We had good butter, because my mother knew how to make it. But that was the result of exi)erience and not of scientific knowledge. I sup- XKHse that things were not very different from this in Minnesota fifteen years ago. About that time the Dairy School of the University was established to give instruction in a short course in factory dairying. Provision was made to give a course of lectures in dairy chemistry; dairy physics; breeding, rearing, management, and feeding of dairy stock; the dairy breeds; selecting or judging dairy stock; diseases of dairy cows and treatment ; with practical training in engineering and the manufacture of dairy products. At the time when this short course was inaugurat- ed there was a general depression in all agricultural lines brought about by a system of wheat growing, which had gradually robbed the soil of its original fertility, making the crops of wheat exceedingly light. liOW prices, and the invasion of grasshoppers and chinch bugs had caused a shortage of money and a rapid increase of farm mortgages. And yet people were slow to change to a more diversified system of farming. At the first session of the Dairy School there were only twenty-eight students in attendance. The instruction given was conducted strictly along popu- lar lines and great pains was taken to have the in- -28 424 ADDRESS ON AGRICULTURE struction in practice work given by persons of ac- knowledged skill in their respective lines. There were at that time in Minnesota but few creameries and cheese factories^ and most of the former were cream-gathering plants owned by private parties. These were, in fact, a detriment to the industry, since no satisfactory results were obtained from them, as the butter was of an inferior quality and prices for cream were correspondingly low. There were, how- ever, a few co-operative creameries in the southern part of the state from which the patrons were getting highly satisfactory returns. These were visited, their methods studied, and in 1892 a bulletin was issued showing the advantages of co-operative dairying, giv- ing in detail the method of organization, with copies of .articles of association and by-laws for the conduct of the co-operative associations and plans for build- ings and list of standard apparatus for equipment. This bulletin proved of great service to farmers in giving reliable information and good advice in meth- ods of organization. During the past half dozen years there have generally been in attendance at the Dairy School from seventy-five to one hundred stu- dents, though there has never been any direct effort made to increase the number of students. The qual- ity of the instruction given in the class room and its helpfulness to the people of the state have been al- lowed to speak for the school. There have been two features in this short course which brought to it the good will and confidence of the public. First and foremost was the eflfort made to build the industry upon a purely co-operative plan, to have it entirely owned by the farmers who furnished the milk and to keep it under their control. With us the creamery ADDRESS ON AGRICULTURE 425 or cheese factory is a neighborhood enterprise in which every milk-producer takes an interest, just as he does in the district school. The creameries are or- ganized upon plans furnished by the school. The second feature which has been a potent force in the growth of the school and the dairy industry, is the character of the instruction given in the class rooms. The instruction in the creamery and cheese factory training rooms has always been given by the most skillful and successful men that could be found in our creameries and cheese factories, regard- less of their education in other lines. Only men who had won distinction by actual work at the separator, the churn, the worker, or the cheese vat, were selected to give instruction in the practice work. A special effort has been made to make each student a useful and helpful citizen as well as a good butter- and cheese-maker; to teach him that his influence should extend beyond the walls of his creamery or factory ; that he should establish friendly relations with each patron, should modestly and kindly offer suggestions as to care and feeding of cows, how to provide forage, methods of cultivation, the proper treatment of the common ailments of cows, and the conditions neces- sary to secure a large flow of milk. There are now in Minnesota eight hundred and twenty-five cream- eries and seventy-six cheese factories in actual opera- tion, nearly all of them being operated and owned by the farmers; nearly all using the same system of bookkeeping that is given in the short course in the Dairy School; and every creamery in the state is using the Babcock milk test, and I am sure is making first-class butter. And now what progress has been made in these 426 ADDRESS ON AGRICULTURE yiears. As to number of milch cows, yield of milk and butter-fat : Annual Yield Number of Milk Butter fat Year. Milk Cows. lbs. lbs. 1890 566,000 2800 110 1895 620,000 3000 114 1900 789,000 3250 123 1905 900,000 3500 133 As to price of butter-fat, earnings per cow, and total annual receipts: Butter fat Earnings Gross Year. per lb. per Cow. return. 1890 $0.12 $13.00 $ 7,500,000 1895 .15 17.00 10,540,000 1900 .18 22.00 1 7,360,000 1905 .22 29.00 29,100,000 But this is not all that science has accomplished for dairying and stock raising in Minnesota. Pro- fessor T. L. Haecker, of the Dairy department of the University, has, by a long series of experiments carried forward most patiently and conscientiously, done a work of inestimable value to the farmers and has established new laws for the feeding of domestic ani- mals in relation to both the kind and amount of nutrients needed to make growth, to maintain the body, and to return animal products. He has demon- strated that the teachings of Dr. WolflF, the Gterman scientist, who has been the authority on these sub- jects for nearly half a century, are erroneous, and he has so clearly proved his own conclusions to be cor- rect that they are now being recognized and approved by our most advanced scientists, and Professor Haecker has been invited to deliver a course of lee- ADDRESS ON AGRICULTURE 427 tnres at Cornell University in explanation of his discoveries. The laws of nutrition and feeding standards for- mulated by WolfF were chiefly based upon the as- sumption that animals ate and yielded products ac- cording to their size or weight. The experimentation conducted in the Dairy Division of the Department of Agriculture of the University of Minnesota has completely demonstrated that all the old standards of maintenance and feeding standards for milk pro- duction are faulty to an extent that makes them worth- less. New standards for maintenance of the animal body and new feeding standards for milk production based upon the quantity and quality of product yield- ed, have been formulated, which greatly simplify the proper feeding of cows for milk production and which will result in larger yields and great saving in cost of production. There are certain things especially to be desired and sought for in connection with agriculture. First. That the number of farmers should be in- creased. Almost all other workers are jealous of com][)etition and of being crowded in their work and of having the supply of labor greater than the de- mand, thus reducing wages. But there is no such feeling among the farmers. The life of the world de- pends upon their labor and it is hardly possible to raise more crops than the world can consume. Min- nesota is pre-eminently an agricultural state and her farmers are numbered by the tens of thousands. But there is room for more. The newcomer will be wel- comed. He can not possibly harm the farmers nor reduce the price of their farm products, because a hungry world is waiting for all that we can produce. 428 ADDRESS ON AGRICULTURE Second. But even more important than the in- crease in the number of farmers by immigration into the state either from other states or foreign countries, is the selection of farming as their future occupation by the families^ the sons and daughters of the farmers — in other words loyalty of the country people to country life. It is a very important problem how to maintain a proper balance between the country and the cities. Many country lads go to the cities and become most important factors in developing the business of the cities. Very few city boys go to the country, and those who do are not generally remarkable for their success in farming. It is almost necessary for the health of the country that there should be a constant infusion of country blood and vigor into city life. But it is not desirable that there should be too much of this. Agriculture is in a large sense the life of our country. It is desirable that a large percentage of country boys should stick to the farm. I am quite sure that those who do will stand a better chance of success and be far more certain of independence and happiness than most of them would if they should try their fortune in the city. Happiness is the universal desire of men and what they are all seeking. Men have different ideas of happiness and how to get it. Most men think it de- pends on great wealth or great fame or great power or great influence or great something. Gtenerally Hjyedkiug happiness attends on temperance and mod- eration. "Give me neither poverty nor riches." C!om* fort, not extravagance or excess, a home, food, cloth- ing, pleasant family life, friends — ^these are enough; and if with these we have the spirit to do good to all as ADDRESS ON AGRICULTURE 429 ve have opportunity, there is no good reason why we should not be as happy as human beings with in- numerable unsolved problems before them and death the inevitable end, can ever be; and in no class of people are all of these conditions better met than they can be among the farmers of the present day. Labor is not as hard as it once was. Machinery helps out. The reward of labor is generally ample, and, but for occasional storms and bad seasons, is sure; and the life need no longer be solitary or lonesome. The telephone helps out. But it is not to be expected that farmers' sons will remain on the farm merely from a sense of duty, if the life is disagreeable. To keep the boys on the farm, life must be made pleasant. The home must be pleasant. The boys must have something to do besides work, eating, and sleeping. There are few occasions in the year when I am more delighted than at the closing exercises of the Agricultural School. The enthusiasm for farm life which the young men and young women display and evidently feel is per- fectly charming. And their enthusiasm is not kindled merely by the thought of living on the land and work- ing on it as their fathers have done — ^with no prog- ress ahead — but it is kindled by the thought of improvement, progress, ideals realized, experiments successfully made, a nobler agriculture created, some- thing done for the good of the world; and well may enthusiasm be kindled by thoughts of country life like these. Third. To make sure that the farm will be per- manently attractive to the boys, and that it will be permanently profitable, and that production will be adequate for the wants of the world, agriculture 430 ADDRESS ON AGRICULTURE generally must become scientific and the farmers must utilize scientific discoveries and apply scientific prin- ciples to the culture of their land. You might as well try to run your farm with the tools of fifty years ago, without any of the machinery which invention has supplied and which saves hundreds of millions of dollars to the farmers every year, as to try to till your land without paying any attention to the dis- coveries of science in the last twenty-five years. Men have written on agriculture many hundred years. Yet it is not too much to say that agricul- ture as both a science and an art had no existence a century and a half ago. And its full development as a science as well as an art has occurred within the last fifty years. Greater progress has been made I think in the last thirty years than in all the cen- turies preceding. The old time agriculture tilled the land more or less eflPectively and fertilized it so far as opportu- nity and means permitted. But there was no real knowledge of the constituent qualities of soils, of the food necessary for plants, and of the means by which the soil's qualities could be adapted to the plants' demands. Constant fears were entertained in the olden time lest laud should wear out and cease to be productive, and this fear has been realized in many parts of the world. But modern chemistry has placed in the farmer's own hands the power to restore to the land by rotation of crops and fertilizers all the strength which the crops have taken from it ; so that to-day the farmer can pursue his work accord- ing to exact principles of science and need not as in the olden time work in the dark with results de- termined by chance rather than by nature's laws. ADDRESS ON AGRICULTURE 431 Whatever else may be said of agriculture as a profession this at least is true. The man who cul- tivates the earth and makes it yield food for man is doing a work that is valuable to mankind. He may become rich or he may remain i)oor; but there can be no question as to the value of the work he is engaged in^ and no objection can be raised to it on any of the many grounds upon which other oc- cupations are objected to. Neither the influence of the work on the man himself nor the effect of the work upon others can in any normal condition of things be other than good. And how many occu- pations are there of which that can not be said ! In the old days it was supposed that anybody could be a farmer. No special learning was required. The son did as the father before him. A hardly comfortable supi)ort was wrung from the rocky soil of New England by the hardest kind of toil. And the farmer who made much more than a living for himself and family, had inherited a peculiarly good farm, and in some way had learned how to culti- vate it better than other farmers cultivated their farms. But the old style of farming has broken down. The competition of richer lands and of developing science has resulted in the survival of the fittest. Agriculture has moved its headquarters from the far East to the Mississippi Valley. How long these great states of the West will be able to feed their own prosperous and happy people and at the same time furnish food for millions elsewhere in our country and in other parts of the world, will depend largely ui)on the wisdom of the farmers in adopting the suggestions of science and their patience in tilling 432 ADDRESS ON AGRICULTURE their land in a thoroughly effective way instead of the wasteful and slovenly way which, by reason of the cheapness of land and the fertility of the soil, has. been possible and altogether too common in the past. I appeal to the farmers of Minnesota to meet the responsibilities of their high calling in such a man- ner as will not only insure their own prosperity and the comfort and happiness of their families but will also contribute in a large way to the sustenance and welfare of less favored peoples of the earth. Eleven years before the Civil War broke out in 1861, the value of the entire property of this coun- try was only about 17,000,000,000. To-day the projH erty of the country is more than |107,000,000,000^ and the wealth created in a single year is three times the whole value of the property of the country in 1850. The war cost us half of the country's prop- erty. The wealth created in a single year now, if it were all applied to the cost of the war, would pay the entire cost five or six times. The products of our manufactures are more than f 15,000,000,000 a year, and our farm products amount to more than 15,000,000,000. These are great figures. But this is a great country and hardly anything surprises us. Certainly we are not surprised that 80,000,000 of people should produce by manufacturing and farm- ing an average of |250 for every man, woman, and child in the country, and that is what we are doing,, and that, too, without taking into account the im- mense amount of labor expended all over the coun- try in the great work of education and religion, the value of whose products can not be measured in dollars. That is a very poor conception of the highest life ADDRESS ON AGRICULTURE 433: which makes it consist entirely in the production of material wealth whether drawn from the soil^ the mineSy or the arts. These products are all the means, for man's continued and comfortable existence. They are means and not ends. The end is the intellec- tual and spiritual development of man, not mere existence as with the beasts that perish, but devel- opmenty growth, the realization of higher ideals, the apprehension of the grandest truths, the restoration of man to that divine image in which he was first created. When men everywhere shall fully realize and live up to the idea of the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of men, the divine image will once more be stamped upon the race. Let us all do our best to hasten the day, in the joyous assur- ance that class jealousies and personal hatreds will then disappear, and men, loving their neighbors as. themselves, will unselfishly do good to all as they have opportunity. JAMES KENDALL HOSMER * Mr. President and Gentlemen: Some few weeks ago at a banquet in this room I announced my intention of withdrawing from ban- quets, and from after-dinner speech making. I trust I shall not be censured too severely for forgetting my resolution, and consenting to be here to-night. You remember that Shakespeare in his delightful play of Much Ado About Nothing, makes Benedict explain his change of mind as to getting married by saying, ^^that when I said I would die a bachelor, I did not think that I should live until I were mar- ried.'' And so when I said I was going to discard banquets and speech making, I did not think that I should ever live to see a banquet at which there was ^^Something More to be Said," my toast here to- night. But even if this explanation is not sufficient, you will please notice that I did not come in until your banquet was over, and that, as I have not had any dinner, I am not making an after-dinner speech. If, however, I were disposed to break my reso- lution on any occasion, I could find none that would be more attractive than the present And no occa- sion would give me more delight than to be here, *£ztemporaneoii8 address delivered at the dinner given Dr. James K. Hosmer at the Nicollet House, Friday evening, January 29th, 1904, by the citizens of Minneapolis. 436 JAMES KENDALL HOSMER and to say in a few plain words what I think of Dr. Hosmer, and of the obligations of Minneapolis to him. It is a little hard to analyze a man, and, meta- phorically^ if I may say it to his face, dissect him. But yet I must be permitted to do so somewhat, be- cause he is here for the purpose of being dissected. And I am here as his demonstrator in anatomy. The first thing that impressed me about Dr. Hos- mer, and has always impressed me, is that first of all he is a gentleman. Now, a man may be a gentleman, and yet be very unlike Dr. Hosmer. Undoubtedly every man here is a gentleman. But there is not a man here that in any essential particular resembles Dr. Hos- mer. He has his own indiyidualify, his own per- sonality, and all his little characteristics, that all bleud together, and you feel, as you look at them, that they are all characteristic of a gentleman ; that he wouldn't say a rough and unkind thing to any man unless he were compelled to say it ; that nothing but a high sense of duty would induce him to be on any occasion anything but a gentleman. And such I haye always known him. Now, it is my impression, an impression that has grown the longer I have lived, that there are not very many great men in the world There are men far above the average in goodly numbers, but the number of men that are really great is comparatively small. But there is a kind of greatness that is somewhat peculiar, which Dr. Hosmer possesses. He is an historian of no mean rank ; yet he is not a John Fiske; he is not a Dr. Parkman. He is a novelist of no mean rank, yet he is not a Thackeray. JAMES KENDALL HOSMER 437 He is a theologian of the broad views and the wide love of the Channing school^ and yet he probably is not the equal of Dr. Channing. He is a scholar, combining all the graceful scholarship for which Old Harvard is so distinguished. He is a student, with a love of study and of knowledge and of culture in his heart. He represents more distinctly, perhaps, than almost any man in the city, and perhaps, more than any man, what you distinctively recognize as <:*ulture; not merely the possession of great knowl- edge, not merely the reading of correct books, not merely the study of a great variety of subjects, but the result of that subtle process by which all these things have been assimilated, and made to beautify and glorify his intellectual and spiritual nature. He is remarkable for the possession of this variety of qual- ities and abilities. And when you come to combine them in this way, they add wonderfully to the total of the man's power and attainments, and make us all appreciate, as we must, the fact that we have had a man among us, and have still, and long may he stay with us, whose attainments, whose variety of achievements, whose excellence in so many de- partments, whose kindliness of spirit, whose unvaried courtesy, and everything that is best in man, make him an honor to the city. And I have felt all these years, when, officially, I have been brought into closest relations Tsith Dr. Hosmer, that the presence of this gentle-man, sweet in spirit, broad in his sympathies, catholic in his tastes, refined in every fiber of his high intellectual and moral nature, that the presence of this man in the Public Library was a blessing to the city of Min- neapolis. 438 JAMES KENDALL HOSMER His knowledge of authors, and of books, has been of the greatest assistance to the Book Committee of the Board of Managers, of which committee I have had the honor to be a member during the last year. His readiness at all time to do and prepare things to give us the least possible trouble, his efforts to come to us, rather than to make us go to him, his unfail- ing attention to our interests, rather than his own, have been simply superb. And in his place as librarian, when men have come to us from other cities, distinguished scholars^ men known all over the world, he has been an honor to us, as our representative, in receiving these men, Full of knowledge, full of that indefinable grace, whicli, say what you will, can be found nowhere un- less the spirit of generous, genuine culture has pre- ceded and prepared the way. And in Dr. Hosmer that work has been completed and glorified. We are here to-night for the purpose of doing honor to this modest, Christian, cultivated, learned, productive gentleman. We are here to honor him not only because he has given us faithful and efficient service for twelve years in the Public Library, but because all this time he has been an honor to the city, before the I)eopIe of this country, and before the world. And when men have spoken of Minneapolis, they have spoken of it, not exclusively as the place where the largest amount of flour is produced, or where the greatest multitude of logs are collected together and sawed into lumber, or where any other material interest lias been largely prosperous, however valu* able they may be to the city, and to all these higher in- terests even, but they have thought of it as a place JAMES KENDALI. HOSMER 439 where cnlture is honored, where men respect scholar- ship, where men have a regard for character, where men who have made something of themselves by the training of their intellects, and the restraining of their passions, and the developing of their spiritual nature, until they grew to be types of the highest men and so far God-like, are respected and honored. And Dr. Hosmer has given us an opportunity to honor men of this kind. Doctor, you are to be congratulated, again and again to be congratulated, that in twelve years of your life, in your own modest way, with a free- dom from pretension that is complete and absolute, you have been able to bind the ties of affection around the hearts of a company of men like this, gathered to do you honor. Go where you may, sir, you will never, never, be able to gather around you a more loyal and loving body of men, of high character, and of ability to appreciate real worth, than those who have gathered here to do you honor to-night The state of Indiana produces, I suppose, more politicians to the square inch than any other state in the Union— except Ohio. But the state of In- diana is not honored in these days mainly for its politicians, even though in the past they have been led by such men as Oliver P. Morton and Benjamin Harrison. But they have Lew Wallace and Booth Tarkington, James Whitcomb Biley, and Senator Beveridge, and Edward Eggleston, who have really produced an atmosphere of culture "along the banks of the Wabash." And to-day when we think of In- diana, we do not think of her as the storehouse of politicians, that are ready to break forth and take possession of the rest of the country, certainly we -29 440 JAMES KENDALL HOSMER do not think of them as suBtaining the glory of In- diana, but we think of these literary men, who have sprung up and in some mysterious way have learned to say the things that are useful and delightful to the rest of the people. What makes Boston what she is? Why do they in Europe think that Boston is the representative of everything that is civilized, outside of positive savagery, on this continent? It is not her history. It is not her commercial greatness. It is not her material possessions. What does Europe care for the Bunker Hill monument? The less some parts of Europe hear of it, the better. What do they care about the Boston tea party? Or any of those events that are sacred to the Bostonians. But there was Hawthorne, and Emerson, and Ix>ngfellow, and Holmes, and other scholars, that lived in or around Boston ; and there was Daniel Webster, and Edward Everett, and Bufus Choate, and Wendell Phillips, and Theodore Parker, and a host of others, who in Fanenil Hall voiced the highest aspirations of the country, of humanity, and of the world. And Eu- rope reverences Boston because of her literary and intellectual men, that have made that city their home, and have given forth to the world productions that are as lasting, some of them, as Demosthenes' oration On the Crown. And when by chance in the good providence of God there comes into this western world a man of the refinement and culture and light that Dr. Hos- mer brings with him, and carries with him at all times, we, the common men of Minneapolis, who live by our brains, and, being occupied in other ways, have not time for the development of this scholar- JAMES KENDALL HOSMER 441 ship, culture, and knowledge, do well, as it seems to me, to rise up and do justice to him at this su- preme moment. And now, gentlemen, I am going to conclude. We, who have reached nearly the three score years and ten, recognize the fact that we are facing some- thing in the near future of which we know but little, and there comes to us a sympathy peculiar among our- selves, as we feel that it is quite likely that almost hand in hand we may go together into that unseen, but, as we hope, beautiful land. I received yesterday a postal card from a gradu- ate of Yale College, in the East, who graduated the same year that Dr. Hosmer graduated from Har- vard, a distinguished lai^yer, a distinguished judge, who was smitten down a year and a half ago, just after performing an important function in a public address to a Bar Association, and he wrote me, "My health is about as usual. God seems very near to me, and I write to tell you so.^^ Dr. Hosmer, our prayer is that you continue to reside in Minneapolis with us, as long as God spares your life, and while you are here, remember that the heart of Minneapolis is very near to you. May you feel in truth the love which Minneapolis cherishes for you, and in the face and light of your old age, may you trustingly look forward to the time when you also shall feel that God is very near to you. A RESPONSE* President Sloan: I >vish it were possible for me to express to you ill a few words the very great pleasure which we have experienced in being present at your centennial celebration. We have listened with delight to the sermons and addresses which have been delivered, and to the noble Centennial Ode, and the eloquent Commemorative Address ; and we esteem it one of the happiest incidents of our lives that we were invited to be present on this occasion. And now you have filled our cup to overflowing by bestowing upon us this special honor. The value of Such an honor depends entirely upon the character of the giver. We are familiar with the history of South Carolina College; we know the noble character of the men who have carried forward its work in the interest of religion and education, the two great forces upon which we must rely for keeping the world from going to ruin ; we know the influence which the college has exerted in the state, and how closely it has been identified with the men who have made for themselves a great name at home and abroad, and we are proud to have ^Delivered at Colombia, South Carolina, at the Centennial of Sonth Carolina College, January 10th, 1905, in acknowledgment of the honorary degrees conferred and in behalf of those who received a degree. 444 A RESPONSE our names placed among your alumni; proud to re- ceive this recognition from South Carolina Collie, and doubly proud to receive it from your hands, sir, as president. We thank you for the honor conferred; we con- gratulate you on the success of this centennial cele- bration, and we wish for the college the greatest prosperity in the years to come, and for yourself the glory of an administration that shall give a de- cided uplift to the character and manhood of the young men of the whole state of South Carolina. What a delightful thing it is to be a teacher and to be associated always with the young ! The freshmen are always young, and they never grow old. The fresh- men of next year will be just as young as were the freshmen of this year. It keeps us young to be con- stantly associated with the young. It keeps our hearts warm. It keeps us in touch with humanity. Nothing else is so charming and inspiring as this perpetual association year after year with young men; unless, indeed, it be, in a co-educational insti- tution, a like association with young women, and I doubt if the young women themselves would believe that association with them could be more inspiring than association with young men. But when we have both, what more could be asked? I have no doubt that it is largely owing to this that you and I and the rest of us are so young as we are. Time can not touch us because of our environment It is a great satisfaction to me that there is at the present time such a cordial good feeling among the colleges of our country, such a catholic spirit, such a freedom from jealousy and unfriendly rivalry. We are all engaged in a common work. We all have A RESPONSE 445 the same pnrpose. We are trying to train citizens who will be a blessing to the country. The success of one is the success of all. The glory of one is the glory of all. The misfortune of one brings sorrow to all. And so we are prepared to wish for you what we would wish for ourselves, that the value of your work may be appreciated by the people of the state; that the legislature may be liberal in providing for your wants ; that the people may trust you generously with the training of their sons and daughters; and that the influence of your work may so permeate every part of the state that the people, out of their fulness of joy, shall rise up and call you and your honored colleagues ^^blessed," because of the grand work which you have done for South Carolina. Be assured, sir, that we shall carry to our homes a most pleasant remembrance of our visit here, and that in the years to come we shall cherish a most lively interest in the welfare of South Carolina, and es- pecially of its college, which we sincerely hope may become the University of South Carolina. LINCOLN, STATESMAN AND ORATOR * Mr. President and Gentlemen: I am certainly very grateful for yonr kindness in inyiting me to be your guest this evening. I feel as if I should best repay that courtesy and kindness if I were to sit down without attempting to make any speech to-night. The hour is too late. I have no prepared address to make, but for that reason I can perhaps fit in better than if I had one, after what has been said, for the English language has been put to its utmost i)ower, during the last few days, to give expression to the American sentiment and appreciation of Abraham Lincoln. From the elo- quent orator who spoke, the other night, in Brook- lyn, to the equally eloquent orators who have spoken here to-night, the highest praise that in this age has been bestowed upon any man has been rendered to Abraham Lincoln, in the presence of the people who neither felt nor expressed dissent. Abraham Lincoln is the one man in this nine- teenth century who is certain to live in all the coming ages. Ulysses S. Grant will be remembered as the great commander who led the forces of the Union through that great contest to ultimate victory, but *Ad extemporaneoos address delivered near midnight, February 13th, 1893, at a banquet of the Loyal Legion, in St. Paul, after great addresses had been made by Archbishop Ireland, Bishop Fowler, and others. 448 LINCOLN, STATESMAN AND ORATOR he will be remembered more on account of the great events with which he was associated and the great combinations in which he was the moving spirit, than by reason of any personal qualities of his own out of which were produced the elements of victory. Abra- ham Ijiucoln, despite the great things that he did» will be remembered hardly less for what he was than for what he did. He is a perfectly unique figure in the midst of this century and of all the centuries — nothing like him since the creation of the world. As Ingersoll said, the other night, he had no an- cestors, no fellows, and no successors; and it is lit- erally true. Born in a log-cabin, in poverty, such as has been described here to-night, he did not de- rive, so far as I can see, any inheritance of wealth, of blood, or even of brains, from his ancestors. His mother, it is true, was superior to any other of his ancestors that I can find. Lincoln himself said, when president, and in the zenith of his power, '^All that I am and all that I hope to be, I owe to my sainted mother." But what his "sainted mother" was think- ing of when she married the inefficient and shiftless father I have never been able to determine. How much of brain power Lincoln derived from his mother, it is impossible to say. She taught him to read and write. She did more for him than the twelve months of schooling, which was all that he had during his life. She died when he was only nine years old. Think of it! A boy nine years of age, left without any comforting, guiding, inspiring influence in the world, what an intellectual and moral nature his must have been that, amid the great events in which he was afterwards called to act, he was able to rise to the majesty of the highest manhood and of the noblest LINCOLN, STATESMAN AND ORATOR 449 statesmanBhip that this broad country has ever seen ! You ask me to speak of him as a statesman. Poor boy, hired hand on a flat-boat, surveyor, clerk in a country store, lawyer, in the legislature in 1837 for the first time, just as in the Empire State another figure, educated in college, cultured, polished, bril- liant, was made governor of that great state. Hum- ble, honest Abraham Lincoln, sitting in the house of representatives in Illinois, Illinois black with Egyptian darkness, Illinois, practically a Southern state, Illinois, whose legislature in 1837 is endorsing human bondage and negro slavery — ^humble Abraham Lincoln sitting there, without a record, without any- thing back of him, and God only knows what is before him. And in Albany, the capital of the Em- pire State, in the governor's chair sits William H. Seward, the polished leader, the orator, the disciple of Thurlow Weed, the man skilled in management, in politics, in administration, in government; the man who, as governor of the state of New York, did more in the line of statesmanship, solved more questions, led to more reforms than Abraham Lin- coln accomplished in his whole life. There are the two men. And, in 1858, William H. Seward is talk- ing, at Rochester, of an ^^irrepressible conflict,'' and Abraham Lincoln, at Springfield, Illinois, is talking about ^^the house divided against itself that can not stand." Here are the two men, the eastern type of the polished civilization and the western man born of the people, self-made, without polish, and with nothing but his own unaided efforts and culture. And in the year 1858, this tall, lank, sad-looking man, is brought forward as a candidate for United States senator, before the people of Illinois, and enters into 450 LINCOLN, STATESMAN AND ORATOR that contest with the yonng giant, Stephen A. Dong- las. Douglas, a figure to inspire, vigorous, ambitious, successful, the leader of the great party, a man who had never known defeat; and Lincoln, the uncouth, raw, tall, lank, sad-faced young man who had never known success ; the one representing the fleeting and passing changes of political i)olicy, and the other rep- resenting the eternal truths of God. They fought it out upon that issue, and the i)olicy of the present triumphed and Douglas was senator. 1858 passes by, 1859, and then comes 1860. The tall, plain, com- mon-sense, clear-headed orator of Illinois goes East. He goes into Cooper Institute and he makes that speech, the most logical, the most argumentative, the most convincing speech that was ever made on Amer- ican soil, a speech which demonstrated the policy of the fathers of the republic, of the men who framed the Constitution, as to their opinion of slavery, and he closed that speech with a sentence which is the key to his character, the key to his success, and the key to his glory, "Let us have faith that right makes might, and in that faith let us to the end do our duty as we understand it !" That speech, gentlemen, made Abraham Lincoln president of the United States. Now, why was it, when the Republican conven- tion met and the contest was between Abraham Lin- coln and William H. Seward, between the plain man of the West and the cultured man of the East, be- tween the man who had shown no practical states- manship and the man who had shown all the arts of statesmanship that the Machiavelli of eastern i)oli- tics could impart to him, that Abraham Lincoln was chosen as the candidate of the parly for president, and not William H. Seward? Why was it that the LINCOLN, STATESMAN AND ORATOR 451 house-divided-against-itself speech wa« deemed less dangerous than the irrepressible-conflict speech of Mr. Seward? Have you ever thought of the reason? The reason is not far to seek. There was the diflference in the two men of just this nature: Mr. Seward, though he was a leader, an advanced leader, in the great army of freedom, though he had resisted the encroachments of slavery, though he had represented the Free Soil wing of the Whig party in the state of New York, was always endeavoring to regulate the processes of aflfairs and the operations of princi- ples by thoughts of the success of the party. Mr. Lincoln, on the other hand, beginning back twenty years before men had advanced far enough in his own state to believe slavery to be wrong, had taken, from the first, the position that principle was everything, and that upon right principle must rest the foun- dation for the building up of a party. The party, feel- ing Mr. Lincoln would be planted on eternal princi- ples; the party, feeling Mr. Seward might be drifted from side to side by the eddies and whirling tides of policy, chose, and the nation chose, and they chose right, they chose Abraham Lincoln. God bless him ! they chose Abraham Lincoln, and he was elected. He went into the presidential chair, and the great vic- tory which has been described here to-night was won. And oh, what a man he was ! I went to him, once, and sat with him in the White House. I went down there as the messenger of Governor Buckingham, of Connecticut, to plead with him for a change of policy in a certain particular affecting our ability to carry on the war. He received me just as I suppose he re- ceived everyone else, with a courtesy that could not be surpassed. He threw his leg over the arm of his 452 LINCOLN, STATESMAN AND ORATOR chair and he sat there and talked with me as familiar- ly as if I had been Oovemor Buckingham himself in- stead of his messenger. And I saw then, and I have never f orgotten, why it was that Abraham Lincoln in that long struggle in the years that followed^ kept the great body of the Northern people so in touch with himself^ when statesmen of no mean reputation and generals of great popular favor and editors of papers that had voiced the sentiment of his parfy^ deserted him ; it was because he never forgot that he came of the people, that he was of them, that by them he had been raised to power, and that for them the services of his life were to be rendered. And the great heart of the man, the tender heart of the man, was ex- hibited in all his career. But I can not stop to speak of that. What an orator he was! What an orator! Not an Everett, studied and polished, like an actor; not a Webster, with his mighty and majestic rhetoric and his soaring imagination; not a Phillips, with his gracefully repressed intensity and his boiling passion delivered in ice-bound sentences; but Lincoln, Lin- coln, the orator of conscientious thought, touched and glorified by a universal charity. • Oh, the man, the greatness of the man ! How he grew as the years went on ! As was said of one even greater than he, ^^He increased in wisdom and stature and in favor with God and man." And when he went up to Gettysburg, there in the midst of the war, with his great burden resting upon him and his heart drop- ping drops of blood, of sympathy for his suffering country, what a speech was that he made, ten sen- tences that will live longer than any eloquence that has been spoken on earth in nineteen centuries. And LINCOLN, STATESMAN AND ORATOR 453 where did he get that style so plain, so clear, so simple? You may read Demostheues with his mighty argument; you may read Cicero with his sweeping denunciation, in clear, polished sentences; you may read Erskine, with his admirable statement and great common sense and practical application of law ; you may read Brougham, with his thundering periods of denunciation; read whom you will, but Lincoln never got his style from the great orators of the world, he got it from the English version of the Bible, studied it from reading those simple words that the loving John has recorded in regard to Jesus Christ. And the spirit of all that he si)oke, during those last years of the war, where did it come from? Ah, it is the spirit of the broadest humanity, best exem- plified in the Son of Man. O great-hearted man! noble-hearted man ! homely-faced, sad-faced, pathetic- faced! the nation wept when he died, and there was no friend of liberty and no patriot loving his country who did not feel that the world was more lonesome when Abraham Lincoln went away! ROOSEVELT: THE COLLEGE MAN IN POLITICS* Mr. Toastmaster and Oentlemen: I came here expecting to enjoy the dinner and not to be called on to speak. I am half disappointed. I have enjoyed my dinner but I am called on to speak. It would seem that enough has been already said by the distinguished speakers who have preceded me. At this early hour of morning no company, after listening to eloquence for hours, can be in any proper condition to be greatly thrilled by any subsequent utterances, and this company might well be spared the necessity of listening to me, a private citizen of Minneapolis, having neither claim nor desire to be included among the s;)eakers of the evening. But it is possible that I may speak from a some- what different standpoint from that occupied by any one else. I propose to speak of Theodore Roosevelt, not as vice-president of the United States, though he holds an honorable office and he fills it well, but rather as the college man in politics. My admiration of Mr. Roosevelt is not in the least dependent on his official position. I had entertained the highest es- teem for him long before he was elected to his present office or to any of the important offices which he has ^Delivered extemporaneously at a banquet given in Minneapolis by Thomas H. Shevlin, September 2nd, 1901, to Theodore Roosevelt, vice- president of the United States. Two weeks later Roosevelt was presi- dent. -30 456 THE COLLEGE MAN IN POLITICS filled. It is Theodore Roosevelt, the true man, the scholar, the thinker, whom I honor. It has been al- together too much the practice of scholars to stand one side with uplifted nose sniffing at the corrup- tion in politics, doing nothing themselves while grumbling at those who tried to do something, and waiting for the millennium to come in some mysteri- ous way as a result of their not doing anything ; and there has been a class of pessimistic literature dis- tributed among students and young graduates of our colleges for the last twenty years whose apparent ob- ject has been to destroy all patriotic feeling in their hearts and to make them despise the country which they ought to love. Fortunately not all our young collegians have been tainted. Some of them have continued to believe that the country was worth doing something for, and that they could do some- thing for it. But no man ever accomplishes much standing alone. The successful man must have co- operation. He must rally to his support the people who believe in the principles for which he contends. Theodore Roosevelt has done this. Recognizing the fact that greed, corruption, and bribery are to be found in all parties, he has thrown himself into tlie midst of these things within his own party and has rallied to the fight the men who believe in honesty and who, but for a brave and wise leader, might be led unknowingly to help tLt; forces of corruption. To-day there is not a true and honest man in the countrv between the Atlantic and the Pacific who does not recognize in Theodore Roosevelt a statesman who can be implicitly trusted and the ideal, earnest, genuine, honest American. The more such men there are, the better for the country. THE COLLEGE MAN IN POLITICS 457 I am not saying these things to please our dis- tinguished guest nor for momentary effect on this company. I want my words to sink into your minds and to be remembered. There are serious and well- known evils in connection with legislation in this country which ought to be removed, and must be re- moved if the country is to continue to prosper. Noth- ing is safe, if representatives may with impunity sell their votes, sell to the highest bidder the power and influence with which they have been temporarily en- trusted by the people for the welfare of the people. Yet bribery and the sale of votes go on. You know it and say nothing. You know where the sore is, but you do not place your finger on the spot. Nobody will do anything or say anything till some brave leader apx>ears who dares to face the danger and dares to lead. The people will do their duty when the right leader calls them. And in Theodore Roosevelt we have a leader as fearless as the knights of chivalry and as patriotic as the men who died to save thet republic. The young men of the country believe in him and will follow him in any attempt he may make to purify politics, to promote honesty in legislation, and to in- sist upon a high standard of personal character in public life. Give us, for the good of the country, more Roosevelts. PRESIDENT Mckinley* I suppose that enough has been said to meet the requirements of this occasion, but the audience gath- ered here is of a peculiar character; it is not an ordi- nary audience of citizens; it is an audience largely made up of the students of the University, and my relation is such to them that it justifies me in saying, at least, a few words to them. While these lessons of wisdom have been laid be- fore you, I can not forget the fact that the body of our departed president lies yonder in an Ohio town, waiting for burial ; and I can not but feel and almost say in the language and spirit of the Boman orator "my heart is in the coffin there and I must pause till it come back to me." I can not talk to you with the glib and ready tongue that I should per- haps have on other occasions. I must talk to you not from the intellect, but from the heart. The na- tion mourns; the great republic, that in these last few years of her life has listened to the wise counsel and judgment that have placed her among the na- tions of the earth, mourns ; the great and good leader has been struck down and the people mourn. Les- sons there are and many of them on every hand, but first of all it seems to me that President McKinlev ./ ^Remarks made extemporaneoasly at a public meeting in the Armory of the University of Minnesota, on the day of President Mc- Kinley's burial, September 19th, 1901. 460 PRESIDENT McKINLEY was not only a great man, but a good man; and he was so great and so good that we should not ever have known it, had he not died in this way. You have been told that he did not possess the matchless eloquence of a Webster, the deep learning of a Sum- ner, and the unique power of a Lincoln, but that he was an all-round, symmetrical man with his faculties completely under his power; a born leader; a clean gentleman, so that after he became president he grew and developed himself and has exhibited a power in his actions that no one could foresee at the time of his election. Who thought when he took charge of this government's affairs in a time of pro- found peace and prosperity that his term would be one of such momentous importance? At the stern behests of our people McKinley led us into a war with Spain ; we conquered Spain ; we took the Philip- pines; we annexed Hawaii; we appeased China; we settled the money question — ^all these problems and the great work of his administration seemed com- plete and then in the moment of his highest glory and complete achievement he is struck down by the bullet of an assassin. On the morning of the 16th of April, 1865, as I was walking down Chapel Street in New Haven, I was met by a breathless messenger who said that Lin- coln had been shot and the secretary of state, Seward, had barely escaped assassination. At such news the heart of the nation stood still, first in a moment of anger, then in the agony of indescribable sorrow such as this nation had never known before. But the slaves were free and the great principles for which this glorious government stands were secure. Lincoln, whose great heart had been full of sorrow for four PRESIDENT McKINLEY 461 years, bearing ui)on his heart, as he did, the death of fathers, brothers, and friends, had gone out in the evening for recreation and relief from duty and at that hour the bullet of the assassin reaches him and he dies. On the 2nd of July, 1881 James A. Garfield, president of the United States, walks the platform in the depot of the city of Washington, rejoicing in the peace of the moment, as only such a man as he could rejoice, in the prospect of going back to Wil- liams College which he dearly loved, to receive the congratulations that would not fail to be poured upon him by his friends, and it is in that moment of su- preme joy that he is shot down, and you all know how the nation waited weeks and months in an agony of sorrow and anxiety as he went slowly down into the valley of the shadow of death. Less than two weeks ago in the great Exposition at Buffalo the people of the country had gathered, not only to see the Exposition, but to meet and enjoy the genial presence of the president of the United States. Surrounded by the American people, loyal almost every one of them to their heart's core. Presi- dent McKinley was struck down by the bullet of an assassin and in less than two weeks is dead. I am not here this afternoon to discuss the policy of the country. Friends, I believe in the United States of America; I believe in my country with all my heart. Bom in the patriotism, religion, and wis- dom of the fathers and saved by the sacrifices of the men and women whose souls were filled with such principles and honor as made our Union i)ossible, it has been preserved and ijoill be preserved by the loyal hearts of nearly 80,000,000 of people and will be sanctified by these national sorrows. I have no fear 462 PRESIDENT McKINLEY for its future. But I want to live in a country where there is lato; I want to live in a country where liberty is not license; where plots to murder are recognized as crime and are punished as crime. I do not believe that conspiracies to murder either the humblest citi- zen or the president of the republic are any part of the liberty for which our country stands. I have said that President McKinley was a great man. I will not follow that thought further, but I wish to emphasize the thought that President Mc- Kinley was a good man, a good man. He honored his mother, that venerable lady that shared in the glory of his first inauguration; that had taught him from the first the principles of the Bible, and he honored her to the end of his life. He was a man who had no idea of gaining anything but in a right way; he was a man who would have scorned a gain or act of selfishness as dishonorable and disgraceful to himself, and it would have been. Young men, you are going out into life soon, into its activities. Remember there is no path that leads to the highest honor but the path of rectitude; do that which is right; stand up always for the things that are good, pure, and true ; do your part in bring- ing on the reign of righteousness; be something; be a power always for good; know what is right and stand for it every time, and your influence will be felt in the world. How many of the 80,000,000 of our people have such a standard God only can tell; but if the young men of the country will take the path to glory which is not through selfish and dishonorable ways, but is the path followed by, and marked out by the Lord Jesus Christ, there is a glorious future for this country, more glory than is possible for any PRESIDENT McKINLEY 463 other couDtry to attain^ for our fathers have estab- lished a country of peace and freedom to every one who wishes liberty and justice. What privileges are not yours — ^there are none whatever. The nation is to-day in its spirit and loyalty to truth as liberal, as just, as beneficent as in the days of the fathers, and as such it will undoubtedly continue to be. A nation that honors the name of our blessed Lincoln is a na- tion that is going to maintain in their purity the in- stitutions of the fathers. I have no fears for my coun- try, for I believe in the people of the country, and I know that they will preserve what the fathers died to establish. The government goes on. Into Mc- Kinley's place steps a young man forty-three years old and takes the executive chair; the youngest man that has ever been president of the United States; a man eminently worthy to take the place, and emi- nently able to fill the place that McKinley filled and to carry out the policy laid down by McKinley; a scholar, a college man, a man trained intellectually; a man who, when he had been trained, never forgot that he owed something to his country; who did not join the self-satisfied critics who find fault with the work of others, and do nothing to help; a man who will maintain the same political standard of honor as in the past, and will resolutely maintain law and order; he has proved himself eminently fitted to fill every position to which he has been called, and to meet any responsibility which may be laid upon him. I deplore with the deepest sorrow the great calam- ity that has come upon us in the death of our good, grand, and dear President, but I thank God from the bottom of my heart for Theodore Boosevelt; I thank God for his life. He has been my ideal of the scholar 464 PRESIDENT McKINLEY in politics; he has been an inspiration to me; he is destined to be an inspiration to me in the future^ and I pray now in this closing moment that the blessings of God may be showered upon him and rest upon him in this sad and trying hour^ and in the days to follow that God may guard him from the weapons of the assassin and make him a blessing to the country. God save the republic and make it great, grand, and good, and may the memory of our dear President, whose body to-day is to be laid in its last resting place, abide with us in all future time as an inspiration to a true and manly life in the service of our country. ACCEPTANCE OF STATUE OF JOHN S. PILLS BURY FOR THE UNIVERSITY* Mr. President: I am sure that for the moment we are all lost in admiration of the beautiful statue that has been un- veiled; that you and all this assembly feel as little like listening to anything I have to say, as I do like saying it I would rather stand and look upon that face and enjoy the first impression and admire the perfect features, the life-like expression, the charac- teristic attitude, which the sculptor has been so suc- cessful in portraying, and rejoice in the fact that this is to stand here for all time — a memorial of the great good-feeling of the alumni towards Governor Pills- bury and the University ; a memorial of all that Gov- ernor Pillsbury has done for this institution. In be- half of the University I accept this splendid gift with the greatest pleasure and the deepest gratitude. Years ago in a meeting of the Board of Regents, soon after I first came to Minnesota, General Henry H. Sibley said to the assembled board, "if the state of Minnesota, at some time, does not erect a statue of Governor Pillsbury on the campus of the University it will fail in its duty, and be grossly ungrateful for the services he has rendered the state.'' I have no "** Remarks at the nn veiling of the statne of Honorable John S. Pillsbury, September 12th, 1900. 466 ACCEPTANCE OF STATUE doubt whatever, if this matter had been left for the coming years, generous Minnesota would have seen that a statue was erected, and would have done all that could be expected of her in honor of Governor Pillsbury ; but I am glad that the alumni of the Uni- versity, and the special friends of the institution, have taken up this matter in advance, and have an- ticipated any action on the part of the state, and es- pecially while Governor Pillsbury is still with us. The erection of this statue rightly belongs to the Uni- versity and it« special friends. It is not for me, in accepting this gift to enlarge at any great length upon the magnificent service Governor Pillsbury has rendered to the state of Minnesota. As governor of the state, as senator in the legislature, as a leading business man of the state, as an enterprising pro- moter of industries, in a hundred ways he has been most serviceable to the state. But no work that he has done will be remembered longer, and no part of liis life will bring him greater honor than the years that he has so patiently and unselfishly devoted to the interests of this institution. A man may give liberally of liis money and well deserve the thanks of the University, but when a man like J. S. Pills- bury, strong, vigorous, and enterprising, with patient care and devoted interest gives his days and nights, lie is giving his very life that you and your children may receive an inestimable blessing in the years to come. There never has been an hour, no, not an hour, since I have been associated with him in this work, that his ear was not ever ready to hear, and his tongue willing to utter, the counsel that was needed. Ten thousand times more valuable than all the money he has given, is the time he has so freely bestowed OF JOHN S. PILLSBURY 467 upon this institution. I do not exaggerate when I say that during the last forty years Governor Pillsbury has spent as much as nine years in the service of the University. It is eminently fitting that he should be honored as he is to-day. His real monument is the University itself^ and it is beautiful that this statue, so complete, so life-like, so truly expressive of him, should stand here looking placidly at the institution which he loves ; it is beautiful that this statue should stand here to be looked upon by the young men and young women who will come here for the purposes of education, and who will be constantly reminded by it how much a man of truly noble purpose can do for the good of his fellowmen. Governor Pillsbury has passed through clouds and darkness like most men — we pray that his remaining days may be like this bright day. Yesterday was dark with stormy skies; to-day the sun is shining, everything above speaking of the beauties of earth and the i)eace of heaven. JOHN SARGENT PILLSBURY* This is probably the first commencement of the University of Minnesota at which Governor Pills- bury has not been present, and, if it is possible for spirits in the other world to revisit the scenes of their earthly labors and interests, I doubt not that he is liere with us to-day. None of his many interests in life were closer to his heart than the University, and for none did he labor with more unselfish devotion. It is eminently appropriate, therefore, that on this first commencement since his death, we should specially remember him with memorial exercises. We can express but feebly at best our sense of bereave- ment and loss. Some things are beyond expression. Some feelings are too deep for utterance. Some ex- periences are too sacred to be told. No words can express the sorrow we feel when one dear to us has been taken from us forever. That sorrow is not a single sharp pang however acute that pierces us, but once past does not return. It is an ever-recurring pain that breaks in upon our daily enjoyment, that interrupts our most engrossing activities, and that is sure to visit us with paralyzing longings in the silent watches of the night. Time does indeed dull ^Delivered at the University of Minnesota, on commencement day, June 5th, 1902, at a memorial service, in honor of Honorable John S. Pillsbury, at which a number of addresses were made. 470 JOHN SARGENT PILLSBURY somewhat the sharpness of the pain, but no lapse of time can give security that it will not return. Once stricken by such a sorrow we never are and never can be quite the same i>ersons we were before. Our horizon may shut in much that is delightful and fitted to give us joy, but something that was most dear to us has gone forever, and nothing else can supply its place or wipe out our sense of loss. With bowed heads and a new consciousness of the inse- curity of all things earthly, we go our accustomed round of duty, sorely smitten with the thought that the lost one can never again share with us the inter- ests of life, and that the only possibility of meeting him again, is for us in turn to pass through the veil which separates time from eternity. I have no wish to make a careful analysis of the powers or characteristics of our departed friend. I choose rather to speak of him as he presented him- self to the world. What did he do? Why did he do it? These questions interest us far more than in- quiries into the quality of the mental powers God had given him, or the relative degree of control ex- ercised over him by the reason or the imagination. He was not a great orator. He was not a poet. He was not a philosopher. He was not an artist. He was a man. We need not trouble ourselves to con- struct a chart of his brain, nor to locate in the senso- rium the powers that made him effective in life. With marvelous judgment and common sense he raised himself from an ordinary business man to a statesman nobly meeting the needs of the common- wealth and as governor guiding the state away from the path of dishonor and dishonesty to that of honor and good faith. He read much and thought deeply. JOHN SARGENT PILLSBURY 471 and, from being a very diffident and ineffective speak- er, he came to such power as was necessary to inter- est, convince, and persuade his fellow citizens. He had never received a collegiate training him- self, yet no man placed a higher value upon such training and no member of the Board of Regents had higher ideals of what the educational standard of the University ought to be. He was a firm believer in the desirableness of collegiate training as a prepar- ation for professional study and he has many times advocated requiring a full university course as a preparation for the study of medicine. Unlike many self-made men, his consciousness of great natural powers did not lead him to despise study and culture ; but on the contrary, it made him feel, as a man of less intellect could not, how much the natural powers can be aided and strengthened by the training and discipline of the college. He lacked entirely the self- satisfaction and self-conceit so often characteristic of smaller self-made men. The first time I ever saw Governor Pillsbury was in 1884, when, with three other members of the Board of Begent«, he called at my house in New Haven to invite me to take the presidency of the University of Minnesota. In reply to his statement of the wishes of the Regents I said at once, "I do not think I am the man you want." I can see now as plainly as I saw eighteen years ago the gentle smile on his face, as he listened to my remark, the same kind of smile that rested on his face in the last interview that I ever liad witli him. I could not then interpret it By the light of these years of experience with him I can now interpret it. I had not the slightest intention to accept the o£fer, and not the slightest idea that I -31 472 JOHN SARGENT PILLSBURY could be induced to accept His smile meant, '^e will see. Perhaps you will change your mind." And I did. That I ever came to Minnesota is due solely to his i)ersistent determination that I should come, to his careful arrangement of all things to attract me, to his patient removal of obstacles, one after an- other, with a faith in the future of the University that was beautiful to see, and with a faith in me for which I can never be too grateful, a faith that so far as I know was never diminished, and which I can sincerely say I have done my best to justify. And from the moment of my acceptance of the office till he was shut in by his last illness, there was never a question relating to the University on which we were divided in opinion, and never a measure for the advancement of the University for which we were not ready to work as with one mind and heart. There were years when no one really knew much about the financial condi- tion of the University except Governor Pillsbury, and he apparently carried all the details in his own mind and memory. As chairman of the Executive Com- mittee he practically decided all requisitions, and ap- proved of all bills. The details of land grants; the state legislation affecting these grants; the location of the lands selected; the contracts made for sale of land or timber; the purchase of a farm for the agri- cultural department; the subsequent sale of this farm as city lots, and the purchase of the present ad; mirable farm at St. Anthony Park ; the management of the revenues from Salt Spring Lands and the pay- ment therewith of the exi>enses of the Geological Survey; the purchase of coal; the putting down of walks and sidewalks; the planting of trees; the cov- ering of the sandy campus with loam; the defense JOHN SARGENT PILLSBURY 473 before the legislature of the unity of the University holding all parts of the institution together; the securing of appropriations to meet the current ex- penses of the University ; and still more the securing of appropriations from the legislature for the many buildings made necessary by a most unexpected rapid growth ; the erection of one noble building at his own expense when the state failed to grant the needed appropriation; the oversight of building contracts, and contracts for heating and lighting, and for equip- ment of every kind; the appointment of professors and instructors, and janitors, and firemen, to which he gave as careful attention as if he were hiring for himself — ^these are some of the things which this great man attended to, while at the same time he was carrying on the greatest interests in the Northwest. Ijoaded down as he thus was always with cares and duties and responsibilities and during some part of the time with the most painful anxieties and sorrows, there was never a time when his interest and atten- tion were not responsive to any call I might make for the consideration of matters affecting the welfare of the University. Such devotion to a public interest so unfailingly responsive, so absolutely unselfish, so uniformly intelligent and unvaryingly beneficent in its results I have never known in any other man connected with any institution, whether as member of the Board of Trustees or of the faculty. For more than seventeen years I have lived with him, worked with him, counseled with him, rejoiced with him, and sorrowed with him. I have seen him go to his daily toil and return to his home at noon and at night. I have seen, as the years went on, the gray gathering on his face, and his step growing less 474 JOHN SARGENT PILLSBURY elastic. But I did not think the end would come so soon. And as each morning now I look from my home across the street to his old home, I can not yet realize that he has gone and that I shall see his face no more. ^^I can not make him dead." Governor Pillsbury did many an act of kindness, the memory of which is cherished by the grateful recipient of his bounty; he aided munificently many enterprises for which the world is richer and better; he made large donations for the comfort of the aged and feeble, the young and helpless, the poor and struggling; and the great purposes which he had in mind were not all completed, when he was called away sooner than either he or we had expected. But his greatest monument is the University of Minne- sota, which was so dear to his heart, and for which he gave so generously of his time and strength and means, and his memory as a noble benefactor and friend will be cherished, outside of his family circle, longest by the students and graduates and faculty of the Universiiy, which owes its existence and prosper- ity in large measure to him. I can not close these sei*vices more fitly or more in harmony with your feelings than by saying to our departed friend : Dear Governor Pillsbury, kind-hearted, great-souled father of the University, farewell! CONGRATULATIONS* President Kiny: We are living in an age when the value of insti- tntions of learuing is more correctly judged than ever before; and less fear than ever is felt lest the num- ber of our colleges and schools should become too great. Jealousies and rivalries that perhaps once marred our educational unity have to a large degree disappeared, and a generous pride in a common loy- alty to the great work of education has taken their place. The church scliool with its special care for the spiritual welfare of its students, the old universities^ of national reputation and world-wide constituency, the colleges with their special fields of influence, and the state universities with their admirable equipment for more local educational work, are all seen to be needed, and are all appreciated as valuable auxil- iaries in the training of the millions who, in a few years, are to be the governing force in this great re- public. To train the children of our country for use- ful citizenship and to Americanize a million immi- grants a year is a stupendous task, and it needs the earnest effort and hearty co-operation of all the ^Address on behalf of visiting delegates from colleges and uni- versities, delivered at the seventy-fifth anniversary of Oberlin College, June 25th, 1908. 476 CONGRATULATIONS schools, pnblic and private, and all the colleges and universities to insure its being proi)erly done. I would not myself place the slightest obstacle in the path of any one of these institutions in its ef- fort to do what it can for the good of mankind ; and I am quite sure that I voice the sentiment of every one of my colleagues here present when I say that har- mony of purpose and concert of action among the educational institutions of the country are necessary for the best interests of civilization and patriotism. And never before so much as to-day have this har- monv and this concert existed. We are all of us able to look with admiration upon the sustained power and mighty influence of the great universities and colleges of the East. We hail with delight the appearance on our western horizon, on the Pacific coast, of great universities and reputable colleges whether state, independent, or denominational. We recognize with the utmost satisfaction the beneficent work of the great state universities and the numerous colleges of the Central States and of the Northwest. And we note with peculiar pleasure and not a little of tender sympathy the hard struggle and the substan- tial progress of our brethren in Southern institutions who are doing noble work for the attainment of higher ideals in education. We are here to-day with the heartiest feeling of fellowship for one another, and we all gather around you now and tender to you our united oflfering of hearty congratulations on the past and our best wishes for great achievements in the future. In behalf of the more than sixty-five universities and colleges represented hete, I extend to you and to the authorities, faculties, students, alumni, and CONGRATULATIONS 477 friends of Oberlin CJollege, most hearty congratula- tions on the completion by the college of seventy-five years of most honorable and most useful work alike for education, for patriotism, for humanity, and for religion. Oberlin College was established on no nar- row foundation of religious bigotry, or state godless- ness, or class distinction, or race prejudice It rec- ognizes all mankind, women as well as men, the poor as well as the rich, the black as well as the white, as the children of a common Father in Heaven, and all alike as entitled to the blessings of education and to a share in the favor of God. In its early years without great endowments, it gave of its poverty to many a poor boy and girl, black and, white, the opportunity for gaining an education, which for most of them could not have been obtained anywhere else. The spirit of the institution was from the first pre- eminently Christian; not Christian in the every day meaningless sense of the word, but Christian because Christ-like. If the coming of the Kingdom of God for which Jesus taught his followers to pray is to be brought about by the preaching of the Gospel and the establishment of Christianity throughout the world, no institution of learning will have a brighter crown upon its brow than will Oberlin in that joy- ous day when the vision of the revelator shall be- come real and there shall be great voices in heaven saying, "The Kingdoms of this world are become the Kingdoms of our Lord and of his Christ" ; for Ober- lin has been the mother of missionaries, and her sons and daughters are scattered all over the world teach- ing and preaching the gospel ; while many, very many of them, have sealed their devotion with their lives, some of them meeting a martyr's death. And if 478 CONGRATULATIONS there be any spot in this laud on which we may stand and seem to realize somewhat the vision that the first martyr, Stephen, saw just before he died, it would seem that that spot must be here, at the early home of so many missionaries now living or dead, whose consecrated lives come to us as a rebuke of selfish- ness and an inspiration to holy living and holy dying. It would seem that that si)ot must be here where the voice of President Finney for so many years with intense eloquence pressed upon the attention of his pupils the Gospel as a really divine revelation and Jesus Christ as a divine Savior and his call, "Follow thou me," as a divine command. O the power of eloquence born of intense conviction! What a man really believes he can fight for if it is worth fight- ing for, and he can speak eloquently for if it is some- thing that needs to be commended to men's hearts and consciences. And such President Finney and his hardly less mighty successor. President Fairchild, thought personal devotion to Christ to be. And we arc all glad, I am sure, that Oberlin has to-day at its head a man who, if with less flaming eloquence and less passionate emotion, yet with no less fidelity and with greater breadth of vision and larger phil- osophical wisdom, stands for the faith once deliv- ered, the revelation of God to men through Jesus Christ. Aided by a really distinguished faculty, you have fitted men and women here for the work of life ; you have trained them in scholarship ; you have culti- vated music and made it a delight as a fine art and an inspiration as a means of worship. You have made the most of character and have felt that what your students were to be was even more important than what they were to know. Having fitted your students CONGRATULATIONS 479 for work, you have so inspired them with longing for the best things that they have generally sought the best work ; and the stamp of Oberlin everywhere is on the metal that is worth stamping, on things worth doing. Sir, for the glories of the past of Oberlin, for the greatness of its present, and for the brightness of its future, we, the representatives of visiting universities and colleges, tender you our most hearty congratu- lations. MEMORIAL DAY ADDRESS* Mr. Chairman^ Ladies and Gentlemen: The policy of our country has generally been a peaceful one and I hope it may continue to be such to the end of time But we have been compelled to fight on several occasions, and once or twice we have engaged in war that was not necessary. Our inde- pendence was secured only by an exhausting war of nearly eight years, at the end of which the country was without credit, its resources utterly exhausted, the people so i)oor that they could with difficulty get the necessaries of life, and the currency in which the soldiers had been paid so worthless that it had ceased to be even paper money and had become once more simply paper. Under such conditions, it is not surprising that many people doubted whether inde- pendence even had not been too dearly purchased, and that in the general misery no adequate provision was for a long time made for the relief of those who had fought and bled that the nation might be free. But in time the country rallied from its despondency. Prosperity of a humble sort became general. The merits of the soldiers of the Revolution came to be appreciated, and no man in the community had a truer patent of nobility, when I was a boy, than the ^Delivered in the Aaditorium, St. Paul, Minnesota, in commemora- tion of Memorial day. May 3l8t, 1909. 482 MEMORIAL DAY ADDRESS old Revolutionary soldier. Thirty-flve years passed by and the states had become a nation, nnder one (institution. Population had increased, industries had multiplied, new settlements had sprung up, new territory of vast extent had been acquired and the nation felt strong enough to have the courage of its convictions. And so when Great Britain insisted upon exercising certain powers not consistent with our equal rights as a sovereign nation, the national heart was easily fired by the eloquence of patriotic statesmen, and once more we engaged in war with the mother country. Our navy, small and insignificant, won much glory bv achievements that were remarkable under the circumstances, and our army, though perhaps less successful except at the battle of New Orleans, which was fought after peace had been agreed upon, ac- quitted itself with credit and gave proof that the Americans could fight. This war was less destructive to American prosperity than the Revolutionary war except so far as it affected the commerce of New Eng- land, and the nation was better able to do justice to its soldiers than it had been at the close of the war for independence, so that the soldiers of the War of 1812 fared fairly well at the hands of the nation. Thirty-five more years passed by and the nation had grown strong. New states had been admitted to the Union. Texas, having secured its independence, had been admitted to our Union. The people were largely homogeneous, and not seriously divided on any im- portant question except that of slavery. A disagree- ment with Mexico as to the proper boundary between that country and Texas was made the occasion of a war with Mexico, a war undoubtedly brought on in MEMORIAL DAY ADDRESS 483 the interest of slavery extension, but which, in the official utterance of our President Polk, was de- clared to have been begun by the act of Mexico. In this war American soldiers under Scott and Taylor exhibited the greatest bravei7, and carried our flag in triumph over every battlefield, and ultimately hoisted it in the capital of the country. A vast area of country was transferred to us as the result of this war, partly because we had conquered it and wanted it, and partly because, having got what we wanted, we were generous enough to pay some millions of dollars for the privilege of keeping what we had got — an example which led later to our paying Spain some millions of dollars for the conquered Philippines. We had secured what we wanted, for we were strong. But we paid for it not merely the millions of dollars handed over to Mexico, not merely the lives of soldiers who died on Mexican soil. The status of the newly acquired territory as respects slavery became at once the occasion of violent discussion and, though this was temporarily allayed by the compromise meas- ures of Mr. Clay, so that the great men of the Senate, Webster, Clay, and Calhoun, who had been the fore- most figures in public life for half a century, died in peace, not seeing the evil that was coming, yet not a half decade had passed away before the struggle was renewed with new intensity and added bitterness, and North and South stood facing each other with fiery determination not to yield, both of them realizing that the "irrepressible conflict" of Mr. Seward was no unmeaning phrase, and that Mr. Lincoln's solemn declaration that ^^no nation can exist half free and half slave" had so much of truth in it as to make it necessary for our nation to say which it should be — 484 MEMORIAL DAY ADDRESS all slave or all free — ^and before the question was settled we had paid the penalty of all our wrong doing, if blood and treasure can ever pay. We honor the soldier of any war who fights for the flag, though the flag be carried out of the country in the interests of glory rather than of safety; and so we remember the heroes of Buena Vista and Oherubusco and Chapultepec, though they fought against a neighbor- ing republic in a war of questionable justice. They followed the flag and fought bravely in its defense. But we have a deeper reverence for the men of the Revolution and the soldiers who put down the great rebellion, because they fought, not for aggression, but for the life of the nation ; fought, not because they were comi>elled to, but voluntarily, oflfering up the best years of their life, and even life itself, that the great republic might live to be the happy home of uncounted millions whom they never knew and who would never know them. Go back with me now to the fall of 1860. Abra- ham Lincoln, of Illinois, has just been elected presi- dent. Three other candidates were in the field, Stephen A. Douglas, of Illinois, who of right should have been supported by his entire party, but whom the advocates of slavery and the secret enemies of the Union in his own party, refused to supi)ort; John C. Breckinridge, of Kentucky, the candidate of those Democrats who opposed Douglas; and John Bell, of Tennessee, an old Whig, the candidate of the Union men who were not Democrats and who were not yet ready to be Republicans. Under these conditions, with the Democratic party split into two sections, the election of Mr. Lincoln was almost inevitable. I sup* pose that the followers of Breckinridge, even before MEMORIAL DAY ADDRESS 485 tlie election, were conscious of some scheme for seces- sion and that they deliberately betrayed Donglas and made Lincoln's election probable, in order that, with a Black Republican in the presidential chair, they might more easily fire the Southern heart, and induce their states to secede. Yet even thus, Mr. Lincoln was elected by a minority of the people, though he re- ceived 180 electoral votes to 123 for all others. Of the popular vote Lincoln received 1,857,610, Douglas 1,291,574, Breckinridge 850,082, and Bell 646,124. No state that voted for Mr. Lincoln would have gone against him if the votes for Douglas and Breckin- ridge had all been for one of these candidates. But if there had been no split in the party and all had been heartily united on Douglas, no doubt the vote would have been much larger and possibly the result would have been different. Be that as it may, Abra- ham Lincoln was elected president in the constitu- tional way; and the Southerners most ardently at- tached to slavery could not have more efficiently aided his election than they did, if they had desired it. Of course as soon as Lincoln w^as known to be elected there was trouble, and of course that trouble began in the state of South Carolina, whose lawless- ness and attempts at nullification brave old Hickory, Andrew Jackson, had so promptly suppressed in 1832. Within twenty-four hours after the polls closed for the presidential election — and remember Mr. Lincoln could not enter ui)on the duties of his office till four months lat^r — South Carolina had begun the work of seceding from the Union and a month and a half later, December 20th, 1860, she formally passed "an ordinance to dissolve the union between the state of South Carolina and other states united with her un- 486 MEMORIAL DAY ADDRESS der the compact entitled CJonstittition of the United States of America." One of South Carolina's lead- ing statesmen, Mr. Robert Barnwell Bhett, said at this time and said truly: "The secession of South Carolina is not an event of a day. It is not anything produced by Mr. Lincoln's election, or by the non- execution of the fugitive slave law. It has been a matter which has been gathering head for thirty years." Of course it had. Lincoln's election had not taken the South by surprise. They were ready. They knew just what they meant to do and they did it at once. Georgia, Alabama, Florida, Mississippi, Lou- isiana, and Texas had all seceded from the Union before the end of January, 1861. Seven great states of the Union, containing millions of people, had thus apparently settled the gravest question of the centurj- in six weeks. Ah! how little they knew what was coming! How little they dreamed of the uprising of the North that should carry the old flag back in triumph over their whole territory and wipe out slav- ery itself as with the besom of destruction, wipe out the very idol at whose altar they were now offering the adoration of treason and rebellion. A confederacy was soon formed and a government established at Montgomery, Alabama. Jefferson Davis was made president of the Confederacy a fort- night before Abraham Lincoln took the oath of office as president of the United States. Mr. Davis made twenty-flve speeches on the route from his home to Montgomery to enthusiastic crowds, and was wel- comed on his arrival at Montgomery by a vast con- course. It is worth while at this distance of time to recall some of the things which he said as showing MEMORIAL DAY ADDRESS 487 the perfect confidence with which the South had gone into the secession business. On leaving his home, Jackson, Mississippi, Mr. Davis said : "It may be that we shall be confronted by war, that an attempt will be made to blockade our -poTtBy to starve us out; but they know little of the Southern heart, of Southern endurance. England and France would not allow our great staple, cotton, to be dammed up within our present limits. The starv- ing thousands in their midst would not allow it. We have nothing to apprehend from blockade. ' But, if they attempt invasion by land, we must take the war out of our territory. If war must come, it must be upon Northern, and not Southern soil." Again in a speech at Stevenson, Alabama, Mr. Davis paints a bright future for the Confederacy, but one no brighter than his followers expected. He says : "Your border states will gladly come into the South- ern Confederacy within sixty days, as we will be their only friends. England will recognize us, and a glori- ous future is before us. The grass will grow in the Northern cities, where the pavements have been worn off by the tread of commerce. We will carry war where it is easy to advance, where food for the sword and torch await our armies in the densely populated cities ; and though the enemy may come and spoil our crops, we can raise them as before ; while they can not rear the cities which took years of industry and mil- lions of money to build." These are prophecies which I have no doubt Mr. Davis believed likely to be fulfilled. But a just and merciful God had otherwise ordered. In these speeches Mr. Davis voiced the feelings of the South. The South did not expect that the North -3a 488 MEMORIAL DAY ADDRESS would fight. If it did fight, they felt confident that the South would prove to be more than a match for the North. Indeed they looked ui)on the North aa a nation of shopkeepers, unaccustomed to use arms and lacking the courage to fight; and they really had no doubt that one fiery Southerner was quite the equal of three or four Northerners. Under all the circum- stances, prepared as they were for the struggle, it is not surprising that they should have regarded the success of their secession movement as assured. The North was slow to believe that the South was really in earnest in its seceding ; many believed that, like pre- vious political threats, this was intended to frighten the North into submission to the political ideas of the South. Few indeed could at first believe that the de- struction of the republic founded by Washington was really intended. Under these circumstances the South was ready to act without restraint, without law, while the North was hampered by the Constitu- tion, by divisions into parties, by a feeling of uncer- tainty as to what was best to do, and by the impos- sibility of at once unifying the sentiment of the people, as had been done by violence and force at the South. The South was inferior in numbers, but com- pact, united, resolute, seeing clearly what it wanted, untrarameled by constitutions, laws, or red tape, ready to do at a moment's notice whatever might be necessary, not hindered from doing anything by fear of public opinion, not needing to experiment to find out whether peace might not be restored, occupying the inside of a circle on the defensive, controlled in its counsels and its operations with a unity as perfect as if all power were lodged in a single dictator. The North on the other hand was divided and discordant, MEMORIAL DAY ADDRESS 489 some opx)osed to the war on any terms, some opposed to war unless waged according to the Constitution, some opposed to war if it interfered with slavery, multitudes of its people strongly conservative and keenly sensitive to loss of business, large numbers more or less sympathizing with the South as having been unjustly treated, all action hampered by con- stitutional provisions and formalities, no preparation whatever for a great war, the army broken to pieces, the navy scattered, the treasury empty, the president almost a prisoner in the capital, and obliged to feel his way most carefully lest he outrun public opinion and bring on insurrection in the North, and the re- si)onse of the people to a call to arms for the preserva- tion of the Union wholly uncertain. Tell me, as you look on this picture and then on that, what will be the result of an appeal to arms. Will you not say that the rebellion is too mighty, too well organized, too strongly entrenched to be put down by the dis- cordant and irresolute North ? Mr. Buchanan had continued to be president dur- ing the period following the election down to the 4th of March. He had unfortunately committed himself at first to the theory that no power existed under the Constitution to compel by force a seceding state to resume her place in the Union, and it is of God's mercy to us that in those three or four months the Southern conspirators had not succeeded in binding the nation hand and foot, so that resistance to their plans would be impossible As it was, things drifted along ; Jefferson Davis was seated in his presidential chair awaiting results, just as Abraham Lincoln was journeying to Washington to take the oath of office as president of the United States. Even Mr. Lincoln 490 MEMORIAL DAY ADDRESS had no idea of what was coming. His inaugural ad- dress is a noble argument for union and a noble ap- I)eal to his countrymen to maintain the Union. But it was powerless to stay the storm. "In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow countrymen," he said, "and not in mine is the momentous issue of civil war. Ton can have no oath registered in heaven to destroy the government; while I shall have the most solemn one to preserve, protect, and defend it." **We are not enemies but friends." **We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection." The South has gone too far for these words of the new president to influence them ; and the beautiful prophecy with which the in- augural address closed has waited till our own time, more than forty years, for its fulfillment, and has at last, thank God, come true. "The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and pa- triot's grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature." There was a pause after Mr. Lincoln was inaugur- ated. Attempts at negotiation were made and failed. Fort Sumter, alinost the last spot held by the govern- ment within the seceded states, was denied supplies by the authorities in Charleston, and the great ques- tion to be decided by the new administration was whether to relieve Sumter or not; in a word whether to acknowledge itself beaten or show some indications of power and of will to use it. It was decided to attempt the relief of Sumter. This being known, the Confederates under General Beauregard, by order of the Confederate Government, opened fire on Sumter MEMORIAL DAY ADDRESS 491 on the 12th of April, 1861, and after a furious can- nonade of thirty-four hours, compelled Major Ander- son to surrender. The flag of the United States was lowered and that of the Confederacy was raised. Mr. Davis, as advised, had been successful in sprinkling blood in the faces of the people and thereby con- solidating Southern opinion. But that was practical- ly consolidated before. What Mr. Davis had not reckoned on was the effect upon the North. I well remember the hour when the telegraph flashed the news through the country and with almost lightning-like speed the people in every quarter of the North came together at once to avenge the insult and to defend the flag. "Yesterday there had been doubt and despondency; to-dav had come assurance and confidence. Yester- day there had been divisions ; to-day there was unity." The President issued his call for 75,000 men, and the loyal states promptly responded. Men of all races, and parties, and gi'ades, and classes volunteered. To the national unity and patriotic devotion to country at this time Stephen A. Douglas contributed as no other man at the moment could, and to his lasting honor be it said, did all a patriot could to strengthen the hands of his old rival, Lincoln, in his efforts to save the Union. If we could have known what the next four years were to bring to us, surely neither Confederate nor Unionist would have had any heart for the impend- ing struggle. We did not know. Only God knew; and among the things which were to come which neither party expected, which neither hoped for, and which only a fraction of one party desired, was the destruction of slavery, the source of all our woe. We 492 MEMORIAL DAY ADDRESS could have bought all the slaves at full price and freed them more cheaply than we did, if their owners would have sold them and we had been willing to free them; but as it was, we poured out not only the full price in money, but the blood of hundreds of thousands of soldiers, and the tears of millions of mothers, and mdows, and orphans. It was a great victory, but it was obtained at a great price. To speak of the events of the war and the innu- merable battles would require a month instead of an hour. An army had to be gathered, disciplined, and made into soldiers. It could not be done in a month nor in a year. And so 1861 passed away. The sickening defeat of Bull Run on the 21st of July sobered us and taught us the seriousness of the con- flict. The battle of Ball's Bluff, with the death of tlie brave and eloquent E. D. Baker, sent a pang of anguish through the country. 1862 came and the hopes of the nation were kept alive for months by the capture of Forts Henry and Donelson in Feb- ruary; March 8th and 9th saw the rebel ironclad Merrimac destroying the frigates Cumberland and Congress and threatening general disaster until itself disabled by the little Monitor. March 7th witnessed the battle of Pittsburg Landing, where more than 1«S,000 Union soldiers were killed, wounded, or miss- ing, and 3,000 Confederates were buried on the field. June 1st, 1862, came the battle of Fair Oaks, with a total loss of more than 10,000 men to the armies. July 1st came the battle of Malvern Hill, with a total Union loss in the seven days' fight of more than 15,000, and the same day President Lincoln called for 600,000 more volunteers. On the 14th of Septem- ber came the battle of South Mountain in Maryland MEMORIAL DAY ADDRESS 493 with heavy losses; and on the 17th the great battle of Antietam, one hundred thousand men on each side, McClellan, Hooker, Porter, and Burnside, against Lee, Jackson, Longstreet, and Hill, with a loss of more than 12,000 men on the Union side and a re- ported loss of about that number on the side of the Confederates. September 22nd President Lincoln issued his Proclamation of Emancipation to go into effect January 1st, 1863, in all states then in rebel- lion and so 1862 came to an end. There had been much hard fighting; oceans of blood had been shed, but no systematic progress had been made and for aught that api)eared the rebellion was as strong as ever. But the nation was gathering its strength for blows that would tell and 1863 was a memorable year. One Union general after another takes command of the army of the Potomac and fails. General Hooker in command fights the disastrous battles of Chan- cellorsville the first few days in May, and at last re- tires across the Rappahannock with a loss of more than 13,000 men. The Confederates' hopes rise and a campaign in the North is planned. The army of Lee enters Pennsylvania. June 28th Hooker is re- lieved of the Union command and General George G. Meade is placed in command. July 1st, 2nd, and 3rd the battle of Gettysburg was fought between Meade and Lee, a battle fierce, bloody, and glorious, the Confederates were defeated, visions of ruin to Northern cities vanished, and Lee retreated to Vir- ginia, but it cost the Union army nearly 25,000 men in killed, wounded, and missing, among them a large part of the heroic Minnesota First Regiment, whose record that day will be remembered as long as the country shall remain. 494 MEMORIAL DAY ADDRESS The next day, July 4tli, Vicksburg \^ith 31,000 Confederate soldiers surrendered to General Grant. July 8th Port Hudson with 7,000 soldiers surren- dered to General Banks, and the Mississippi was once more open to the Gulf. September 20th, 1863, the battle of Chickamauga was fought with a Union loss of more than 15,000. October 16th General Grant was ordered to take command of the army of Cum- berland and Tennessee. November 23rd-26th came the battles at and near Chattanooga, the Union forces under Grant, with Thomas, Sherman, and Hooker, routing the Confederates under Bragg and forcing him to retreat with a loss of sixty pieces of artillery. March 12th, 1864, Lieutenant-General Ulysses S. Grant was appointed to the supreme command of all the armies of the United States, and henceforth there was unity in counsel and in action. Meanwhile the president had repeatedly called for more troops and had ordered a draft. Riots of the most threatening and violent character had broken out in New York, and for a time the city was in the hands of the mob. England had shown signs of an intention to recognize the Confederacy, and it re- quired the most skillful diplomacy on the part of the government and the best eloquence of Henry Ward Beecher in addresses to the English people to pre- vent her doing so. Hundreds of battles from Virginia to Ijouisiana, some of them of great importance, had been fought, no special mention of which can here l>e made. It is March 12th, 1864, when General Grant takes command of the armies, and turns his special attention to the brave but unfortunate army of the Potomac. May 5th, 1864, begins the series of bat- tles of the Wilderness. In the iirst battle General MEMORIAL DAY ADDRESS 495 Lee furiously assailed the advanciug Union army, and at nightfall the fight was indecisive, and the loss heavy on both sides, but Grant's army was in far better position for further fighting than in the morn- ing. The second day of the battle of the Wilderness was May 6th. Both leaders meant to attack, but Lee was about fifteen minutes ahead and attacked with tremendous fury, all day, beginning at 5 a. m. ; trying our right, left, and center, one after another, and generally gaining a temporary advantage, but only to be finally repulsed by our troops. The bat- tles on this and the previous day were over ground so rough and so thickly wooded that an enemy's move- ments could not be observed. On this account the Confederates had a great advantage by reason of their familiarity with the country. Artillery could hardly be used at all. The rifle, bayonet, and saber did the work. The result, however, was that Grant held his ground and at the end of the fight pursued his plan of advancing towards Kichmond by a move on Si)ott- sylvania court house. In the battles of these two days each side lost about 15,000 men. Nothing in the whole war more astonished the Confederates than did Grant's persistency in advancing notwithstanding the fearful attacks made upon him by Lee and the tre- mendous loss of men. Heretofore such blows dealt to the Union army had not failed to produce change of plan and ultimate retreat. With Grant it was diflferent; and a few days later he wrote to the Sec- retary of War the famous plan of the campaign : "I propose to fight it out on this line if it takes all Slimmer.'' May 7th the two armies in nearly parallel lines 496 MEMORIAL DAY ADDRESS are racing for Si>ott87lvania court house. May 8th there was severe fighting at Spottsylvania court house. Our troops carry a rebel position after heavy loss and take position within two miles of the court house, Lee's army being strongly entrenched a mile in front May 10th occurred the first day's battle of Si)ott8- sylvania court house, our army obstinately attack- ins:, the result not decisive and the loss on each side 10,000. May 12th Grant's Second Corps under Han- cock charged the left of the Confederate works in a fog at dawn with the bayonet, and hardly firing a gun, surprised at breakfast and captured within an hour a whole division, men and officers, with 30 can- non. Hancock instantly charged on the second rebel line and took it, thus gaining the key i)oint to the rebel entrenchments. The rest of the day was spent in furious assaults, — and by the Union army to gain more ground. No further advantage was gained by either and again 10,000 men on each side had fallen. The 15th of May was the first day of rest for the army of the Potomac for twelve days. On the 18th, after fierce attacks upon Lee's lines, his i>osition was found to be impregnable and our troops withdrew after heavy loss. May 19th Grant began to move his army to the left. May 21st the whole army con- tinued its flanking march towards Hanover, Lee hav- ing already gone. On the 23rd Grant's army crosses the North Anna. On the 25th Grant reconnoitred the strong position of Lee in front, and concluded he did not like it well enough to attack. He again takes up the flanking movement on the left, towards the Pamunkey. On the 27th he reaches Hanover within fifteen miles of Richmond, Lee again facing him. On the 15th of June General Grant's armv crossed the MEMORIAL DAY ADDRESS 497 James River, the whole force, having been drawn out from within fifty yards of the enemy's entrenchments and moved fifty-five miles by the flank, was carried across the Chickahominy and the James, the latter 2,000 feet wide and eighty-four feet deep, with a total loss from skirmishing and straggling of not more than four hundred men. Henceforth the struggle between Grant and I^ee, lasting almost ten months, goes on about Petersburg, Tvhere there are plot and counter plot, mine and counter mine, assaults and repulses without number. Grant obstinately holding to his de- termination to take Richmond and destroy the rebel army, and Lee using to the last every man and weapon and art he could command to ward off the impend- ing doom. Meanwhile events of the greatest importance had occurred elsewhere. The rebel. General Hood, unable to repel the advance of Sherman into the South, led his army north into Tennessee, hoping to recall Sher- man by danger and destruction in his rear. He drove back such forces as he encountered in his march until at Nashville he faced a Union army under that brave and able general, George H. Thomas — a man ever to be honored not merely for his ability and courage as a soldier, but because, being a soldier of the United States, ho, although a Southern man, remained true to the flag of his country which he had sworn to de- fend. At Chickamauga, with 25,000 men, of whom nearly 10,000 were killed or wounded before the bat- tle ended, be held his position for six weary hours against the furious onset of 60,000 mad rebels; and men called him afterward the Rock of Chickamauga. The battles of Nashville, December 15th and 16th, decided the fate of General Hood, and Thomas' ef- 498 MEMORIAL DAY ADDRESS fective pursuit of Hood's petreating army converted defeat into rout. Six thousand prisoners were taken and forty-nine cannon and the rebel army was reduced to half its former size before it made good its escape —a loss of 20,000 men. All this time staunch old Sherman, Grant's right hand, the man w^ho, though the true soldier every inch of him, did not like war, but very graphically said, "War is hell," was marching south to the very heart of the Confederacy. Sherman had started from At- lanta to go through the South to the sea. Cutting the telegraph behind liim November 12th, he started on the 15th on his famous "march to the sea." I need not stop to recount the incidents of that famous march. It is a story which every school boy for generations to come will love to read. You all know it. He entered the city of Savannah, the southern limit of his expedition, on the 23rd of December, T\ith a loss of less than 820 men on the whole march from Atlanta. He marched north again taking Columbia and Raleigh, the capitals of the Carolinas, on his way, and on the 18th at Durham Station he received the surrender of General Joseph E. Johnston's army, the main force of Confederates outside of Lee's army. Nine days before this, on the 9th of April, 1865, General Lee had surrendered his army to General Grant and the long and bloody contest of four years was practically ended. In the words of another, "Of the proud army which, dating its victories from Bull Run, had driven McClellan from before Richmond, and withstood his best effort at Antietam, and shat tered Bumside's host at Fredericksburg, and worsted Hooker at Chancellorsville, and fought Meade so stoutly, though unsuccessfully, before Gettysburg, MEMORIAL DAY ADDRESS 499 and baffled Grant's bounteous resources and desperate efforts at Spottsylvania, on the North Anna, at Cold Harbor and before Petersburg and Kichinond, a mere wreck remained." On the ]3th of April, the last of the soldiers of I^e were paroled and permitted to return to their homes according to the generous terms accorded them by General Grant. And the nation, which had spent billions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of lives to put down a most unrighteous and uncalled for re- bellion, looked on with a not unkindly feeling for the brave soldiers of Lee as defeated, disappointed, and dispirited they scattered to look up, if any were left, their old friends and to find, if still standing, their homes. The sky was again clear, the stars in heaven were as numerous as they ever had been and from Maine to California wherever there were men who loved their country, there Was joy in the land. The sun rose once more on a happy people, but only once. The very next night, April 14th, the very day on which the Union flag was again raised on Port Sumter, President Lincoln was assassinated. No words can describe the unsi)eakable grief of the nation over this appalling calamity. More tears were shed over Lincoln's death than over any other man's that ever lived. He had carried his burden so bravely, he had been so true and honest, he had kept so near the people, that everybody who loved the country had learned to love Lincoln ; and to have him shot down by the bullet of a miserablis assassin in the very moment of victory and peace seemed doubly cruel. It was, so universal was the mourn- ing, as if death had entered into every household in the land. 500 MEMORIAL DAY ADDRESS I wish I could draw a picture of this man so mourned in death and so loved by the people to-day. Tall^ homely, angular, with a face as truthful as truth itself, he won the confidence of his hearers by his manifest sincerity and convinced them by his com- manding argument. Unaffected and unpretending, with manners that had no i>olish beyond that given by honest good will, with no apparent consciousness of self-importance and even when president with no vanity or false assumption of dignity, he had to the last the simplicity and genuineness of the country man whom neither courts have fashioned nor society has corrupted. His sense of humor was keen; his I)ower of illustration by apt anecdote unequaled; and his logic unsurpassed. With all the natural virtues of a true man, he grew in reverence and spirituality under the keen discipline of national disaster and danger, and his faith grew stronger and at last com- plete in the hour of national triumph. What a les- son his life presents to the boys of America! Born in a hut, and growing up to manhood with almost no opportunities to attend school, he yet rises by the resolute determination to make the most of him- self and by the excellence of his character and the nobility of his principles, to the highest position in the gift of the American people; and then, by the grand manner in which he performed the duties of his high office without forgetting that he is one of the people, and that the government itself exists by the people, of the people, and for the people, he passes through the gates of martyrdom into an immortality of popular love. What a career — ^and what a man! He was no less divinely raised up for his great work than was Moses, or Samuel, or David, or Paul. MEMORIAL DAY ADDRESS 501 It is barely forty-eight years since the firing upon Fort Sumter by the Confederate troops under com- mand of General Beauregard opened the Civil War. It is barely forty-four years since Abraham Lincoln died. So many things have occurred since then, events of the greatest importance in our national life have so crowded upon one another that it does not seem possible that they could have all been pressed into so short a period. But this half century just passing has been a history-making time. The Civil War itself was most memorable. Millions of men were in arms. The losses in battle were unprece- dented. The resources of every part of the country were strained to the utmost and the results in the solidifying of the states into one nation and in the destruction of the entire system of slavery which had seemed to be impregnably entrenched behind the Con- stitution were more tremendous than those of any other war which history records! A nation honors it- self when it honors the memory of the heroes who fought and died for it. And we are assembled to-day to do honor to our heroic dead and to remember with gratitude the great services rendered by the heroes who still linger among us. We are far enough now from the conflict to be able to do justice to all, and to appreciate the heroism and fortitude of even the Con- federates who fought for what they deemed justice, though they fought against the flag of their country and the Union of the states! We may well be thankful if the bitterness and hatred engendered by the Civil War shall have dis- appeared in large measure at the end of a half cen- tury. I know the North has grown more charitable and I think the South has also. We are realizing 502 MEMORIAL DAY ADDRESS to-day as we have not realized for &tty years past that we are one people, with one flag and one destiny. This very year in Atlanta, Gteorgia, a city de- stroyed by Sherman's array in its march to the sea, and rebuilt in these later years for a nobler life than it had ever enjoyed before, there gathered in a great church, on Sunday evening, a large audience of the Southerners called together to listen to an address by the eloquent pastor of the church, on Abraham Lin- coln ; and accepting the invitation of the Grand Army of the Republic to be present and hear the address, was the local organization of Confederate Veterans who had come to hear the story of Abraham Lincoln ; and the eulogy pronounced ui)on the great president by the eminent preacher of the South was worthy of the subject and carried a thrill of delight all through the North and I hope all through the South. The incident is but one of many that tell of a re-uniteon the education of their chil- dren. In 1647 the General Court of Massachusetts ordered every town having fifty householders to establish a school to teach children to write and read; ♦Delivered at the University of Minnesota, June 9th, 1910. 506 COMMENCEMENT ADDRESS and ordered every town having a hundred household- ers to set up a grammar school, the master of which should be able to fit youths for the University. This was unprecedented in the world's history up to that time. Connecticut three years later in 1650 followed the example of Massachusetts in establishing common and grammar schools and in effect also manual train- ing schools, by requiring boys to be apprenticed to learn a trade if they were not able or willing to pur- sue the course of training in the grammar schools. These men of New England knew what they wanted. Education was necessary for the good of both church and state, and education they would have. A writer on the history of education says, that "the colonies of the South were settled on the whole quite as early as those further north. Except Georgia lateness of colonization can not be urged as a reason for delay in establishing schools. As a mat- ter of fact, however, there was no school system in any colony south of CJonnecticut before the Revolu- tion and no enterprise of the kind to speak of before the nineteenth century." It is certainly great glory to New England that she established so early a thor- ough system of public education and maintained it successfully for a century and a half before the other parts of the country had established a school system at all. What that meant for New England and what it has meant for the West where New Englanders have settled can be readily imagined. For many years the eastern colleges drew to themselves most of the men in other parts of the country who desired a col- legiate education. Yale, Harvard, and Princeton were the favorites. Students flocked to them from the South in large numbers. John C. Calhoun was COMMENCEMENT ADDRESS 507 a Yale graduate. James Madison was a Princeton graduate. The West had few colleges of any standing and fresh- water colleges were not held in much honor in the East. Now nearly every state and territory west of New England has its own state university; and, while many young men and young women in the West go east for their education, the great majority of those who enter college in probably every one of the western and southern states, enter their own state university. This is natural because of the nearness of the state university to their homes, and because edu- cation near home costs less than in a distant college. It is also proper, because the education obtainable at the state universities is satisfactory. The men who emigrated from New England to Minnesota brought with them the New England ap- preciation of education. Provision for a university was made in the act of Congi^ess organizing a terri- torial government and, through all the dangers and difficulties and poverty of the early days, the idea of a coming university was never lost sight of, and the charter of the University was at last incorporated in the constitution of the state. It required the most stalwart faith to accomplish this. Scholars and schools for training them were almost entirely wanting when the University was founded. But the faith of the fathers of Minnesota never failed. I need not here rex)eat the story of the struggles for existence through which the University, when once established, went for a number of years. The state was poor. The people were poor. A civil war drew to the battle- field a large part of the men of the state, and it was not until the Union had been saved and peace had been established that there was a i>ossibiIity of 508 COMMENCEMENT ADDRESS caring for the University. In 1869 the University was organized as a teaching college 'under a plan prepared by its first president, Dr. William W. Fol- well, and its first graduates, two in number, received their diplomas in 1873. To-day the number of stu- dents is more than five thousand and the graduates each year number between five hundred and six hun- dred. The men who preceded me in the University know full well what an arduous task it was to keep the University alive in the early years. All through the years of my predecessor's administration and through a considerable number of years of my own administration, the appropriations made by the legis- lature for the support of the University were so small that it was impossible to do more than to care for the pressing wants of the moment. We lived so to speak from hand to mouth. Expansion was not to be thought of. Growth was next to impossible. And when at last appropriations began to be made for an occasional new building and one was provided, it could not be devoted to one branch of learning and made adequate to the wants of that branch of learn- ing for years to come, but it had to be divided among a number of departments, resulting in a temporizing policy of momentary expediency without any possible chance of building according to some plan which should forecast the future. Thus, the first building erected after I came to the University was in theory a building for the technical work of the (College of Engineering and Mechanic Arts. It stands on the campus to-day, a monument of folly artistically and in all other respects, and I hope its future and speedy destiny is to disappear and give place to a more sensible, useful, and attractive structure. But poor COMMENCEMENT ADDRESS 509 as this building was and is, it was the best we could build in point of size with the means at our disx)osal, and it was made to accommodate not only all the technical work for which in theory it was built, but also the department of physics and one or two others. It was soon found to be too small for its occupants and, when another new building was erected which should have been for either chemistry or physics, it was made to include both and accommodate neither. In a short time this became too small for both and a new building was erected for physics and the pre- vious building was given up to the exclusive use of chemistry. To-day the Regents have in hand two hundred and fifty thousand dollars for a main engi- neering building and several buildings for shop work have in the meantime been built. If we could have had the appropriations in the beginning, we could have built much more wisely. But the state was still poor, and appropriations were hard to get. So, too, when the library building was erected; the appropria- tion of one hundred seventy-five thousand dollars could not all be expended for the accommodation or enrichment of the library alone. Students had mul- tiplied. Classes were large. Lecture rooms were in- adequate. The chapel had been burned. So the so-called library building was built to accommodate with lecture and recitation rooms the dei>artments of economics, English, history, and philosophy; to furnish a chapel for daily worship, and to furnish offices for the president, the registrar, the purchasing agent, and the accountant and the superintendent of buildings. Only a small part of the appropriation was spent for the accommodation of the library. Even thus the library was so much better placed than » » ^ r •%' — - J- * Ik .•"" ♦ ■»-. "» COMMENCEMENT ADDRESS 511 ever been possible to plan for the grouping of build- ings and for the new buildings that will be required in the years to come — in a word to plan for the future, and now it is possible. The plans for the new campus as they have been prepared by Mr. Cass Gilbert and adopted by the Regents, give assurance that in the future an intelligent and wise method will be fol- lowed in locating and erecting buildings, and in lay- ing out the grounds, and that the campus, when com* pleted, will be a thing of beauty, a delight to the eyes of all and in no small measure an elevating in- fluence to the students whose intellectual home it will be. I congratulate the Regents of the University that they are called to service when so many great things are to be done for the University, and I congratulate them also on the high ideals which they cherish for the University. With more than a million dollars in hand for new buildings to be erected on the new campus, the opportunity afforded them to establish now in some measure the ideal of the future Univer- sity is unprecedented. I hope they will remember that the buildings to be erected are intended to fur- nish room for the work of the University and not pri- marily for the purpose of exciting admiration. Large sums can be spent in the decoration of buildings and in consequence the buildings be too small, or plainer and larger buildings can be erected which need not be ugly. We have built most of our buildings altogether too small. We have not won much applause for our architecture and we have not had sufficient room. In future let us have adequate appropriations, and then build as large buildings as the appropriations will permit, even though they are plain. 512 COMMENCEMENT ADDRESS While neither campus nor buildings constitute the University, they are essential to the orderly life and successful work of the University. But they are by no means so essential as is a learned, en- thusiastic, and inspiring faculty. And I congratu- late the Regents most of all that the time has come when the resources at their command will enable tbem to call to positions in the faculty men who are eminent in their special subjects of investigation, who can be leaders in research, and who, by their own example, can awaken in their students a genuine enthusiasm for knowledge. I hope that the funds of the University may be freely spent for this purpose. It will be a different institution from what it is now if this policy shall be wisely followed. It will make a great difference if, when additional teachers are required, instead of calling in recent graduates with no experience and no special reputation and at starva- tion wages, men of established reputation as inspir- ing teachers and as leaders of thought in their special subjects, are invited to come at salaries that will enable them to live without constant worrying over the family expenses. It should not be forgotten that teaching is not the only work that a real university may reasonably be expected to do, though that is a most important work. The university should be something more than an advanced high school. It should do original research work and find out things not already known. But not a great deal of such work can be done if all the professors are required to do full duty as teachers in the class room. The Independent a while ago criticized the trustees of American univer- sities for 'booking upon a professor as a kind of hired man." It complained of the "almost absolute ignor- ance in this country of the precise kind of service that a high grade professor In Germany or in Eng- land is expected to render to his nation and the ■world." "What," it asked, "would any American board of university trustees think of the proposition that their professors of highest rank and most highly paid should be left entirely free to offer instruction or not; or to instruct hundreds or scores, or only two or three especially qualified students without dictation from university authorities. With a few ex- ceptions American trustees would pronounce such au arrangement preposterous. Yet in Europe pro- fessors enjoy such freedom as a matter of course; and the arrangement has justified itself by fruits of productive scholarship and scientific discovery which Americans can only envy." However great may be the difficulty in providing professors exclusively for research work, no university can take first rank until it has provided such professors, and has done something by its discoveries to enlighten the world. If I look back a quarter of a century and com- pare the education given by the colleges of the coun- try at that time with the education which they are giving now, I am impressed by some very notable changes which have taken place. The earliest col- leges of the country were avowedly established to provide men for the service of the church and the state. And that purpose has so far dominated col- leges as to keep the curriculum essentially what it was in the beginning down to a late period in the nineteenth century. The most vital new idea which has affected the scope of education in recent years is that men in a great variety of occupations outside 514 COMMENCEMENT ADDRESS of the so-called learned professions, need the higher education in such form as to be helpful in their life work ; and that institutions of learning ought so to broaden their curricula as to embrace subjects, a knowledge of which is necessary in a great variety of employments for which colleges in the olden time had no care. If high intellectual training will make men better clergymen, lawyers, doctors, or teachers, it has been found out that it will also make men better business men, farmers, accountants, railroad men, miners, and better officials of corporations; and the university is now properly called upon to lay at least a good foundation of knowledge for all of these, upon which foundation experience can build. But this involves a tremendous expansion of the curriculum. And this in turn leads inevitably to diminished attention to some of the old studies. When we look for specific changes we easily find them. First of all, Greek has lost its supremacy and is no longer an essential for a college diploma. It has disappeared from most of the high schools of the country. It will doubtless have a revival in the next quarter of a century — ^at least a partial revival — but for the present, at least, it has lost its old standing. Latin has held its old position fairly well, and, though it is not necessary to secure a college degree, its importance is not seriously diminished in the estimation of the best educators of the coun- try. Mathematics, partly on its own account as a disciplinary study and partly on account of its value to other subjects and to certain occupations, such as engineering, still has a firm grasp on the educa- tional world and even the educational reformers have not been able to displace it for something weaker. The Bciences have come to the front and no longer apologize for demanding a large place in the cur- riculnm and no longer need fear that their demands will not be granted. The same may be said of history and of ecoQomica and its kindred subjects. Sociol- ogy and anthropology have made for themselves a good foothold, and the scientific study of human beings and their methods of living is to-day as re- spectable as the study of other animals. Modern languages are receiving greatly increased attention. English and English literature have been given very targe room not only in the colleges but in the schools, and a desperate attempt has been made all along the line to teach the rising generation how to use its native tongue. It is not many years since professor- ships of English literature were first established in Oxford and Cambridge even, and for a century and a half at least the study of English, except rhetorical work, was practically unknown in American colleges. The value of English literature seems to have been entirely overlooked; or it was supposed that the stu- dent, being practically familiar with English, wonld of bis own volition search ont and profit by the riches of thonght contained in English literature. A great many noble writers appeared in England and in America while English literature was not taught in the colleges. Whether the crop of noble writers is to be increased or destroyed by the teach- ing of English literature remains to be seen. But certainly if the college graduate of to-day does not have a fair knowledge of the best English authors and of the development of the language and litera- ture, it is not because he has not had full opportanity. to master these in the college. 516 COMMENCEMENT ADDRESS But of all subjects, agricultural science has made the greatest progress and won the most marked in- crease of attention. Agricultural education prac- tically had no existence a quarter of a century ago. Now agriculture, with its related subjects that affect the welfare of the farmer, has assumed a definite sci- entific form. Its principles are established and can be taught as readily as any other science, and its value is almost beyond calculation because, in addition to its educational value, it is eminently practical and enables the student who masters it to reap a large additional reward in enlarged crops, better cattle, improved quality of products, and increased comfort in home, and lessened exhaustion in labor. The brain is beginning to do for agriculture what it has long been doing for manufacture. I look for great changes in educational methods in the years that are coming and that are not very far away. The population of the world is increasing and the world itself is not growing perceptibly larg- er. Irrigation and drainage may add millions of acres to the arable land of the country; but year by year the increasing millions of people to be fed will more than equal in their consumption of food the total products of these new lands that modern methods have stimulated into active fertility. As the process goes on the necessity for everyone to earn a living will grow more imperative; and that will force out of our grade schools and out of our high schools some of the subjects which now delay the scholar's reaching the study of the things that are going to help him make a living and he will come to these things sooner; and, if he reaches the high school, he will find not the high school of to-day leadJDg directly to the college or to life without special training; but he will find a high school or high schools that will fit him for successful work as a mechaoic, or as a farmer, or, if he will, for the university. But in the university the same necessity of preparing for life's work will meet him, the same necessity to make it possible for him to get his hands sooner on the work he is to do will have been felt by university faenltieB, and the range of sobjects taught will be greatly enlarged to meet the exigent^, and some of these subjects will be much more simple and practical than any that are found in the curriculum to-day. If we are to compete with other nations in manufacture we must have trained workmen. The apprenticeship system has broken down completely for reasons I need not stop to explain. Our present system of training workmen is inadequate and funda- mentally wrong. Perhaps I might better say we liave at present no system. I am glad that the work- ing men, the labor organizations, have already realized this and are fully aware that something should be done to remedy the present condition of things. If I am rightly informed they look to state education, to the public schools and universities to sapply what is wanted; and they would welcome the establishment of schools for the training of workmen in their various vocations, just as the farmers wel- come the agricultural schools. Their wishes in this matter should be met, and provisions made for in- struction in manual work, and in the fundamental principles that underlie construction; and to the fullest extent possible the university should supple- ment the work of the schools and train the future in- ventors and skilled workmen for their duties. 518 COMMENCEMENT ADDRESS I am glad to know that a liberal and wealthy gentleman of Minneapolis entertains at the present time a fixed purjiose to endow in the conrse of the next four or five years a noble institution in connec- tion with the Agricultural Department for the thor- ough training of students in the fundamental prin- ciples and practice of the mechanic arts, something more far-reaching and more contributory to the ele- vation of labor in general than an engineering college can well be. As a final result there will have come a very wholesome sifting of the studies pursued from kin- dergarten to college. Useless things will be eliminat- ed; first and second and third grade books on one subject will be eliminated; no subject will be taught till a pupil is able to understand it and then thor- ough work will be done in it ; at least two grades will disappear from the schools in the interest of economy of time and nothing essential will have been lost ; the high schools will provide mechanic arts training and agricultural training and cultural training as may be desired, ministering to more students because sooner reached than now, and helping more than now; and the same general course of eliminat- ing the unnecessary and the comparatively worthless and adding the useful will mark the course of the universities. If you do not think so, tell me whether the state universities in the last ten years have gone towards the eastern colleges or whether the eastern colleges, Harvard and Yale, have gone towards the state universities. Your answer will show which way the trend is; and it can not fail to show that, while no institution is prepared to belittle culture or will be in the years to come, all the institutions are pre- piiring to respond to tbe call to meet the requirements of that marvelous complex thing, Hfe, in ludustrial America. And tliat tbey may do it, as many as can will liaYC somewhere — no matter what tbe name — graduate department, applied science department, or whatever you please — a department whose special work shall be to make new discoveries, new applica- tions of old principles, to find out new metliods of doing things, and new things with which to do, so that institutions iti their training aiul workmen in productive life shall know the best there is to know and students shall be lielped to a successful life, be- cause patient searchers for the secrets of imture have discovered and revealed the way. It does not seeai to me necessary that all uni- versities should teach the same things; that as soon as one university makes a new departure in any direc- tion, every other university should do the same. It is not necessary or desirable that all the forty-flve state universities or agricultural colleges more or less should make the same experiments. One successful experiment will do for all. In cases of great public importance, like tinding a remedy for epidemic diseases among animals, it may be well for several experiment stations to work on the problem at the same time. Itut experiments on tbe raising of ordi- nary products may well be apportioned out among the stations and thereby a much wider range of ex- periments will be made possible (or the stations col- lectively. So, too, if one university starts a school to train consuls and diplomatic agents of the govern- ment, there is no reason why all the otlier univer- sities should immediately start such a school. Schools of journalism are desirable; but it is not necessary to 520 COMMENCEMENT ADDRESS establish several hundred of them in as many col- leges. Egyptology is an interesting and valuable study ; but it need not form a part of the curriculum of every university. If one university chooses to send an expedition to Assyria to dig for ancient records and decipher them, there is no need for all the other universities to send out such exi)editions. If one university sees fit to establish a branch in China, the others need not do it. Let the work that is not funda- mentally important to the students as a whole but only to limited numbers be distributed; and, if a man wants these rare specialties, let him go where he can get them. No university ought to undertake to teach what it can not teach well. No university ought to let its ambition to be as good as any other lead it into undertaking to do everything that any other uni- versity is doing. Do well what you do at all. If new things are to be introduced, let them be those things that are most intimately related to the welfare of the people of the state to which the university be- longs. This will not meet the approval of certain people who think an ideal educator is a man who is constantly adding to the number of things to be taught. I believe thoroughly in the promotion of knowledge ; but I do not believe in educational in- stitutions that are inverted pyramids. There must be some regard paid to the size of the base in deter- mining the amount of expansion as the structure goes up. The state universities generally were established as co-educational institutions. Of late sporadic cases have occurred of a seeming movement to segregate the women from the men, and to annex them to the universities rather than admit them as of right to COMMENCEMENT ADDRESS 521 the same classes as the men enter. I do not think this movement a wise one and I hope it may never show itself in Minnesota. If people do not like to have their daughters educated in the same classes with men, there are a goodly number of colleges for women only to which they can send their daughters; and more such colleges are coming. But the hunger of women for the higher education seems to grow with the opportunity to get such education, and year by year a larger number are seeking admission to colleges, and apparently the time is coming when a majority of the students in our colleges will be women. Nobody, I suppose, would propose, when that occurs, to put the men into an annex and let the women be the university. Let us have fair play all around and let us be as just to our daughters as we' are to our sons. I am confident that women are to fill a much larger place in the world's work in the fu- ture than they have filled in the past ; that literature, the fine arts, designing, architecture, farming, med- icine and it« related professions, and not a few kinds of business and of manufacturing, will in a few years number among those successfully prosecuting these pursuits not an inconsiderable number of educated, earnest, thinking women who will have learned their power to do many things which they once supposed only men could do ; and who, in a new sense of inde- pendence for themselves, will gladly lead the way to an emancipation of woman which shall save her from the suffering and degradation which helpless poverty has so often brought to her in the past. I have no great admiration for correspondence schools, though doubtless if a boy has no other chance to learn, he can learn something by correspondence. 522 COMMENCEMENT ADDRESS To what extent the universily should try to cover the whole state with its lectures and teachers, I do not undertake to saj. It is for the people of the state through their representatives to determine how far this outside work shall go. If the university is fur- nished with the means to do this work, there is no better agency to which the work could be committed, and the university would doubtless undertake the work with cheerfulness. Inasmuch as knowledge is valuable to everybody, I suppose we can make no great mistake in carrying knowledge to people who are not able to leave home in order to get knowledge. But the whole work needs to be most carefully sys- tematized and the adaptation of the means employed to the object sought needs to be studied very thor- oughly. Otherwise there will be inevitable waste with very little permanent benefit. When a club of farmers is organized, all of whom are eager to learn how to do better farming, we can not be too prompt in carrying to them the gospel of scientific agricul- ture. They know what they want and they want it Where, on the other hand, the call for teachers and lecturers arises mainly from the social instinct and a general impression that culture can in some way be secured through the teaching of visiting university professors, it may well be doubted whether the uni- versity is properly selected to do this work. In any event the university must first do its appointed work of training its registered students and making re- search into new fields of knowledge. If after that is done as well as possible, or proper provision is made for doing it as well as possible, it is further able to carry knowledge to all parts of the state and wisely distribute it, nobody can object to its doing so, if the state wishes it. Possibly great good may be done in that way. Great good certainly has been done in agriculture by the Inatitates which are held all over the state. The popular hunger demaoda, next to agri- culture, probably English literature, and a great many interesting and instructive things can be said in extension courses about literature. But a knowl- edge of literature can be gained only by studying literature. It is never gained hy merely hearing about literature or authors; and the benefit to be de- rived from extension courses in literature, unless earnest classes willing to work are formed, may well be questioned. Mixed audiences of old people, young people, middle aged, and children, drawn together by curiosity rather than by any taste or hunger for lit- erature, are not likely to be permanently benefited to any great extent. There must he a desire on the part of the people to be reached for something more definite than general improvement. If a man is working on an invention, he may come to a point where a knowl- edge of physics would be invaluable, and be will de- sire that knowledge very much and be willing to take it from anyone who is able and willing to ^ve it And so of others. If they have discovered their need of knowledge, and know what kind of knowledge they neetl most, they will be glad to get it, and the exten- sion worker can do them good. But where people have no conception that they need any particular kind of knowledge, and no special use for knowledge, there is little use in soliciting their attention to ex- tension work. At its best that work labors under great difBculties in making itself thorough, and at ita worst it is in imminent danger of becoming super* ficial and perfunctory. But I am heartily in favor 524 COMMENCEMENT ADDRESS of doing everythiug we can to promote the interests of the people of the state. I hail with satisfaction the efforts that have been made and successfally made, as I suppose, to bring the School of Mines into closer relations with the mining interests of the state in such a way as to help greatly the school in its training and ultimately to make the school contribute largely to the success of mining. I am heartily in favor of everything that the C!ollege of Education can do to give outside teachers a broader view of their work and higher ideals for themselves to reach. I am heartily in favor of extension work at the Agricultural High Schools authorized by the last legis- lature, or by Institutes in every county at which the farmers of the county can be gathered, or by sys- tematic instruction through other agencies which the University may be able to employ in carrying out the will of the legislature that most generously provided the funds necessary for this work. But after we have sent out all our educational missionary expedi- tions, I wish it to be still kept in mind that in ac- cordance mth the constitution of the state the Uni- versity is still "located in Minneapolis near the Palls of St. Anthony." What is the standing of the University of Minne- sota to-day as compared with other Universities? It is impossible to say. It is doubtless better than many and not so good as some. There are universities with larger equipment, more distinguished faculties, and greater fame. Minnesota has nearly as many stu- dents as any, but numbers do not make a university truly great. That is conceded by everybody. Ordi- narily manufacturers are judged by their products. Universities may fairly be judged in the same way. This UoiTerBity has never graduated a man or woman who waa intellectually the eqnal of Daniel Webster. The only reason is that nobody has ever entered this University who had an intellect equal to Webster's. If anyone with anch an intellect had entered this Uni- versity, we should doubtless have graduated him. But great men are only in a small degree the actual products of colleges. Natural ability is the prime factor in real greatness. Webster and Jonathan Ed- wards, and Horace Bushnell and Henry Ward Beecher would have been great men wherever they graduated or for that matter whether they graduated anywhere. If men and women with such minds aa those men had, never entered an institution, that institution is not to be condemned because it does not graduate such great men. Basswood is not mahogany, and it can not be made to serve the same purpose as mahog- any. But what kind of men and women are the grad- uates of this University? My heart warms as I ask this question. Some of them have attained distinc- tion, but I can not for obvious reasons call their names here. What especially pleases me is the fact, which has been brought to my notice many times by people in no way connected with this institution, that the graduates of this Univeraity, scattered all over Minnesota and to a surprising degree through the country westward to the Pacific, are men aqd women doing good work, faithful and earnest, respected by their fellow-citizens and in many cases the leaders in evei^thing which makes for culture and right living, and this is the testimony which I get respecting our graduates of all the coll^^ in the University. Now such men and women are the pillars of society in its true sense. They are leaders within the sphere in 52(> COMMENCEMENT ADDRESS which they move. They form public opinion. I be- lieve that our graduates are as useful, as devoted to the right, as earnest to promote the best interest of the state and nation as the graduates of any university in the land. But we are not left entirely to the character of our graduates in determining the standing of our University. The Association of American Univer- sities confessedly contains the best institutions in the country, including the traditionally noted eastern in- stitutions, Harvard, Yale, Columbia, and Princeton. Two years ago, after careful examination of this in- stitution and its work, Minnesota was by a unanimous vote admitted as a member of that association. Tim University is one of the three or four state universities that have been accepted by the Carnegie Foundation as meeting the requirements for institutions whose retiring professors may receive a pension. We have steadily but surely raised our standard of require- ments for admission to the professional schools. Two years of college work are now required of a student before he can be admitted to our College of Medicine. One year of college work is required before one can enter the Law College as a candidate for a degree and two years are required after the next year. The course in engineering has been extended to five years, which practically provides for two years of college work before the technical work of engineering is taken up. The University has established a five-year course in the School of Mines, in addition to the four-year course. All of these changes are strongly in the in- terest of higher and better work and tiiey ought to be satisfactory evidence that the standard of scholar- ship in the University has been decidedly raised. COMMENCEMENT ADDRESS 527 But in one particular the University is very mucli l>ehind many otliera, and tliat is in its graduate depart- ment. This ia not due to any fault of the dean of that department nor of any of the professors who teach graduate students. It is simply because the Re- gents have done nothing to build op the department or to help others build it up. I regret that this weak spot in the University should exist and be so apparent. The very essence of a university ought to be its ability to furnish advanced work to its own graduates and the graduates of other collies where no graduate work can be had. So long as the Begents are indiffer- ent to the building up of the Glradnate School, the University will suffer in comparison with institutions whose graduate work is strong and attractive. I do not believe that this weakness of our Uni- versity will long be permitted to remain, for tlie present Board of Begents is not insensible of the value of graduate work, and can not fail to see that it must be encouraged in this University if Minnesota is to maintain even her present standing among the univer- sities of the country. It is well understood that the University belongs to the state, and that the legislature may be expected to provide the necessary funds for carrying on the work successfully. This is the chief reason why so few private gifts come to state universities. But there are some things most necessary for the welfare of the students of the University which the state with all the other demands upon it can not immediately provide and will be a long time in reaching. An ex- ample of what I mean is Alice Shevlin Hall. I can not speak too enthusiastically of the good that build- ing has done to the women of the University. It has 528 COMMENCEMENT ADDRESS brought them together in harmony and concord. It ha8 given them retirement and rest when needed. It has multiplied friendships, it has comforted the lone- Ijj it has trained the awkward, it has refined the noisy, it has civilized and in the best sense Christianized all. We need a similar building for the men. It would do a world of good to the men, especially to those who do not live at home. It would improve their manners. It would tell for better morals. It would promote brotherhood. It would multiply and make permanent friendships. It would bring faculty and students together in closer touch and in helpful association. I can hardly think of anything helpful to the boys which it would not do. There are many rich men in Minnesota. How easily they could build this building if they would; and what would it be if they did build it? It would be one of the most effective contributions which it is i>o8sible for them to make, for it would tell mightily on the habits, and manners, and character of the men of the University and its influence would be as prolonged as Eternity. If some of these men who have amassed great fortunes could only realize the greatness of the opportunity and build a proper building for the men, their hearts would sing for joy when in the coming years they saw the fruits of their liberality in the thousands of young men who would have been trained into the highest manliness and nobility of character through their beneficence. The purpose of most individuals who emigrate to a new country is to improve their condition. They ex- pect to gain wealth as they could not in the place of their birth. They expect to improve in some way their environment with greater freedom, greater possibil- ities, and new aod perhaps nobler ideals. Some get all they hoped for when they have a house to shelter them and land to yield a living. Borne go a little farther and add to this, social standing and increased influence among their fellow-citizens. Some go fur- ther and make their influence felt in the formation of institutions and the passage of laws. And some go even further and attain their ideals only when the life of the people is, so to speak, placed in their hands to be made in all respects what it ought to be, intel- lectually, morally, politically, and spiritually. Min- nesota has from the first received into her borders representatives of all these classes, and she has them in large numbers to-day. The largest class is the in- dividual class content with the comfort of the home and the family. Ambition for social influence, for po- litical power, for religious impress, is not wanting and characterizes large numbers of people. But all are thrown together in a democracy, in what we call the State, and all pursue their chosen path, influencing one another in more ways than can be imagined, and in some ways that can not be seen. And the outcome is to be what no man can foresee, bat what we all hope will be a state truly imperial in its resources, in the character of its people, and in the happiness and purpose of their life. The final thing is to make life what it ought to be, happy if possible, useful in any event, and everywhere among alt classes as loyal to the truth as the needle is to the pole. It is not possible to trace the influence of every in- dividual through the maze out of which appear at last the power and the grandeur of the state. The largest number of people live so quietly and peacefully that the influence of their lives can hardly be seen or felt. 5S0 COMMENCEMENT ADDRESS Yet it is a real influence. He that is not against us is for us. What the leaders of thought propose, the quiet thousands are ready to supi>ort and they do support by just standing firm behind their leaders and the leaders themselves sometimes appear sudden- ly from the midst of these quiet i>eople among whom they have lived and of whom they have been a part. A New England storekeeper comes here from New Hampshire and opens a hardware store. He is a man of sterling character and clear vision and great com- mon sense ; and he looks out for the good of the com- munity into which he has moved. With the New England instinct for education^ he sees the possibil- ities of the future, and he so guides the frail bark of the recently launched Universily through the rapids of legislation and over the falls of financial disaster, as to bring it at last into safe and peaceful waters and to win for himself justly the title of the Father of the University. Men easily forget. It is well that the monument of John S. Pillsbury stands yonder, that men may not forget what he was and what he did not only for the University but for the honor of Minnesota. A young soldier called to the presidency of a Uni- versity that could hardly then be said even to be a university on paper, comes here ; formulates plans for a university, with its various colleges; formulates a system of public education that shall at once feed the university and train the youth for a life worth living even if they do not go to the university ; lays founda- tions for the best education possible for all classes of people in the state; makes his mark indelibly on the character of the state, and I know not on how much beyond that; and the noble building on the campus, erected to supply the loss of the old main building, not unworthily commemorateB his achievements as it bears the name of Folwell Hall. Tlie great and difftcolt problem of agricultural education in this state, over which legislatures and farmers' conventions had wrangled and grown angry, was practically solved, by a teacher, a Presbyterian clergyman, whose official position brought him into the Itoard of Regents as a member, and who sug- gested the plan for a School of Agriculture within I'each of the farmer's boy ; and the honor that attaches to the success of that school may justly i» large meas- ure be given to David L. Eiehle ; and I hope the Re- gents will at B()me time establish a memorial that viill not suffer his name to be forgotten. A quiet citizen who had known good fortune and had fortune and who had borne himself with equal modesty and composure under both, was nominated for senator by a vote so close that only a court of justice could decide whether he was nominated or not. He was elected and went to the Capitol. He made no great speeches. But he took up the idea originally suggested by Chelsea J. Rockwood, a grad- uate of the University, that the University of Minne- sota needed a larger campus. He pervaded the Senate and the House, the whole legislature, like perpetual sunshine and he won ; and when the greater campus shall be completed and shall become a thing of beauty to be admired by all the people of Minne- sota and to be enjoyed by generation after generation of students, let the name of James T. Elwell be al- ways remembered with honor and gratitude. I can not close this address without making special allusion to the great sorrow which came to the Uni- 532 COMMENCEMENT ADDRESS versity and to the state of Minnesota when Governor John A. Johnson died. He was ex-officio a member of the Board of Regents, and all the other members of the Board, with the exception of the president of the University, were subject to his appointment His in- fluence in the Board was very great as would be natu- ral in any case, but was especially great because he took a deep interest in the University and attended the meetings of the Board whenever it was possible for him to do so. He was a man marvelously winning and attractive in his manners and personality. He was firm in adhering to his convictions. He was clean in his life. He was gentle and kind to those who were not the favorites of fortune. He was a foremost man among men — ^and as I saw him in the Convention of Governors of the various states called together at the White House by Preddent Roosevelt, he was a foremost Gtovernor among the Governors. And the specially interesting fact connected with his prominence, the fact which gave special significance to his whole career, was that he was most emphatical- ly a self-made man. He was not largely indebted to the schools, and not at all to the college for his train- ing, but by the simple process of reading and thinking he grew to the high stature of a most commanding public official, and multitudes believe, what no one can with authority deny, that if his life had not been cut short in the untimely way it was, he would at some time have become president of the United States. We can not tell what would have been. But we can not but admire the patient process of self-improve- ment by which he advanced from obscurity to great- ness, and can not but feel that if he had lived to reach the highest office in the gift of the people, he would, in character, in purpose, iu ideals, in address, and in courtesy have done honor to the office. Hia uutimely death saddened the people of Minnesota and I hope sobered them as thej were made to realize the uncer- tainty of life and of human destiny in this world. I am ahout to retire from the office of president of the University of Minnesota which I have held for twenty-six years. I have had no intention to make this an occasion for a farewell address. Why should I ? I am not going away from yon. I expect to live the remnant of my life in Minnesota. I expect to be interested in the welfare of the University as I have been. I expect to watch its progress and improve- ment nith the utmost pleasure. I shall not suggest any policy op lay down any line of action for my suc- cessor. I think the Regents will be most fortunate in securing the scholarly and able gentleman who ia to be the next president and I predict for him a bril- liant and most satisfactory administration. To the Regents of the University who have always been kind to me, to the faculty who have been loyal and faithful, to the students who have given me far more love and devotion than I deserved, to the alumni who have not forgotten their Alma Mater and who year by year are giving evidence of their readiness to help in many ways, and to the people of Minnesota to whom the University belongs, and who mean that it shall be made a truly great nniversity, I return my most grate- ful thanks for the treatment I have received at their hands during more than a quarter of a century of peace and happiness as president of the University, and I pledge you all my continued best wishes for the prosperity of the University and for the happiness of all who are in any way connected with it. INDEX. Advice to young physicians 21 S-229 Agriculture, in Minnesota 395 Scientific education in 396-398 What Regents of University have done for 399-407,423-427 Separation from the University of the College of 406-413 Horticultural Society 393, 394 Fanners want more farmers 413 Loyalty of country people to country life 428 Number of farmers to be increased 427 Agriculture must be scientific 429 Old style farming a failure 431 Products of agriculture 432 Ideal for workers 433 State Fair 419 The Dairy School 423 Improvement in dairying 422,426-427 Altruism, National, coaunended 367 America, Colonization of 27-30 Expansion of, in the past, 363, 364 Appeal to the South 49 Appeal for good citizenship 168, 169 Bacon, Leonard 5 Baconian philosophy 181 Bare life in early days 373 Barnard, Henry , IS Battle Hymn of the Republic 367 Beloit College 14 Boston 374 U INDEX Boys, Ideals for 231-243 Building college for eternity 352 Buchanan, James 489 Unfortunate theory of 489 Bushnell, Horace 5 Calhoun, John C 337 Chicago 374 Choate, Rufus 62-71 Churches, State 378 Clark, Josiah 7 Clay, Henry 321, 337 Cleveland, Grover 325-327 Action of, in Venezuela dispute 326 Action of, in Chicago strike 326 His use of the veto 326 In Princeton 327 College graduates, Work for 151-165 As teachers 152 As business men 1 53 As leaders in labor 154 As railroad men 1 56 As journalists 157 As authors 1 58 As farmers 1 59 College, Denominational 349 Attitude of state universities towards 357-360 Colleges of New England formerly denomina- tional 348 Now simply Christian 348 Value of the good 350, 353 The old and the new 353-355 Columbia University 11 Connecticut 506 Contentment, not produced by education 387 Not necessarily desirable 387, 388 True meaning of 387 Corwin, Thomas 339 Courts not like legislatures 92-94 Party feeling 102-104 Supreme Court 101 Country, Centennial review of 42-47 Dangers to 105-112 Culture 187 Dartmouth College 11 Davis, Jefferson 486 Speeches of 487 Douglas, Stephen A 200, 206, 338, 339,450,484 Dwight, Timothy 6 Education, Early colonists earnest for 113 Old and new 187 The beat 185 Varieties of, needed 171 Modem, an irrigating syston 177 Glory of 184-192 Public, not to be charged with all our evils 3S2 The old — the man before the specialist 187 Universal, for free people SOS Eloquence 63-69 Decay of, has compensation 179-183 In Parliament 77-82 Lasting theme for 63-69 Erskine, Lord Chancellor 69 False view of life 160 Farmers for congressmen 160 Feudal lord 389 Forum, The 380 Franklin, Benjamin 301 Wise maxims of 311-312 Free education, criticised 380,381 Defended 382-386 Germany's progress in trade 165 Oilman, Daniel Coit 16 Grant, U. S 447 iv . INOBX Great Britain, War with 482 Friendly to United States 367 Greater Whitman College. .'. 451 Hadley, Arthur T 9 Hsonilton College 11 Harper, William R 20 Harris, J. S 394 Harris, William T 18 Harvard University 332-505 Hawaii 368 Heroism, True 203, 204, 484 Hosmer, James K Speaking in honor of 435 A gentleman 436 An historian 436 A novelist 436 A theologian 437 A scholar 437 A man of culture 437 An honor to the city as librarian 437, 438 Idaho 356 Indiana 439 Illinois College 14 Imperialism 366, 367 Independence, Declaration of 34 Kansas-Nebraska Bill 199 Knowledge and power 1 76 Knowledge not all 191 Labor, Captains of 167 Laboratories, Work in 188, 189 Lawyers, Special advantages of 57-61 A conservative force 88 In Congress 95 Duty to the state 97 Lee, Robert E., Northern appreciation of 502 Lincoln, Abraham. ... 76, 209, 210, 336-345, 365,447-453, 460 Debate with Douglas 339 Lincoln, Abraham — (Contintted) Cooper Institute speech 339 Gettyshurg speech 342 Sorrow for the South 340 Waiting to be merciful 341 His style 4S3 Inaugural address 490 Prophecy fulfilled 490 Mourning for 499 His personality 500 Southern appreciation of 502 Louisiana, Purchase of 195 Results of purchase 196 MacVeagh, Wayne 3 Marshall, John 98-100 Massachusetts SOS McKinley, President 459-464 Hero of Spanish War 366 Millennium, Educational, not yet 175 Minnesota, furnishes first regiment in Civil War. . . . 207 Minnesota. Early settlers devoted to education 507 Provision for University 507 University organized 508 W. W. Folwell, the first president 508, 530, 53 1 Number of students in University 508 Early experiences of University hard 508 Living from hand to mouth SOS Temporizing policy necessary for years 509 Planning for the future now possible 509 Legislatures of recent years liberal 510 The new campus 510 Plans for the future of the campus by Cass Gil- bert 511 Congratulations to the Regents 511 Plea for utility rather than display in buildings. 512 An able faculty 512 Research work 512 vf INDEX Minnesota — (Continued) The professor as a hired man 513 Changes in education in last quarter of a century 513-516 Changes in education anticipated 516 Training for real work 517 Getting rid of unnecessary things 518 Fitting for life 519 A graduate department 5 19 All universities not to teach the same things 519 Inverted pyramids 520 Co-educational 520 Prospects for women 521 Correspondence schools 521 Covering the whole state 522 Examples of good done 523 Things to be favored 524 The standing of the University of Minnesota. . . 524 Its graduates 525 Judged by the Association of American Univer- sities 526 Judged by the Carnegie Foundation 526 Judged by the standards for professional work. . 526 Its Graduate Department commended to Regents for additional support 527 Private gifts to the University not frequent. ... 527 Alice Shevlin Hall 527 Building for men needed; what it would do 528 Motives of new settlers in the state 529 Leaders of thought 530 J. S. Pillsbury 530 W. W. Folwell 530, 531 Chelsea J. Rockwood 531 David L. Kiehle 531 James T. Elwell. 531 John A. Johnson 532 Change in presidency of the University 533 Appreciation and thanks 533 New York 374 North and South 502 North not likely to fight 488 North not ready for the Civil War 488, 489 The rising of the North 491 We did not know 491 South ready for Civil War 488 Ohio 439 Ohio University 12 Omnibus Bill 199 Ordinance of 1787 11 Oregon , 356 Panama Canal 368 Philippines 368 Phillips, Wendell 339 Pilgrims 30 Pillsbury, John S 465-474, 530 Piatt, Orville H 332 Porto Rico 368 Possibilities of Greater Whitman College 351 Prairies and mountains 22 Presidents of the United States good 322 Washington to Buchanan 323, 324 Lincoln to Roosevelt 324 Princeton College 10 Professions crowded 162 Progress, American 376, 377 Prosperity needed that is not accidental 166 Races, mixed 373 Real history of country 3 Rhett, Robert Barnwell on secession 486 Roll of Yale presidents distinguished 9 Roosevelt, Theodore '. 327-336 Coal strike 328 The square deal 329 Sympathy with the people 330 Cuba 330 vUi INDEX Roosevelt, Theodore — (Continued) Transportation 330, 33 1 Peace 333, 334 The South 335 Conservation 335 Irrigation, waterways, civil service 336 The scholar in politics 455 His brave leadership foretold 457 Succeeds McKinley 463 Estimate of 463 Savage, Increase of wants of, first sign of enlighten* ment 388 Schuyler, Eugene 3 Secession 485, 486 Senate, in 1850 Why it is what it is 331 What it will be, when people elect directly 332, ZZZ Seward, WilUam H 209, 449 Slavery agitation 197 Slaves, Teaching of, why forbidden 389 South America, Trade with 165 South Carolina 485 South Carolina College 443-445 Speakers in America 82 Speakers in Parliament 51-55 Special training needed 163 Specializing must not be carried too far 171-172 Sumter, Fort 490 Taft, William H 2 Taney, Roger B 100 Tariff, not cause of every ill 180 Teaching and teachers 138, 245, 246, 251 Texas, Results of annexation of 322 The Christian spirit 379 The endless duty 361 The Golden Rule 356 The glory of our country 390 The three states ur Theological control Two interesting pei University, State, c Not sectarian, What shall it 1 Vision of the futur War, of independe The Civil .... Events sunum Soldiers of. . Great themes f Has our count] Mexican Washington, Georj Washington, the st Webster, Daniel . . . Webster, Noah .... West, The, inspirii Western Reserve C( Whitman College.. White, Andrew D . Worcester, Joseph Yale In Civil War. In diplomacy. . In United Sta In Constitutioi In public affai Conservatism < Graduates of, other coll Work in educa m '.« ^ THIS BOOK IS DUE OK THE JsABT DATE STAMPED BEItOW AN INITIAL FINE OF 25 CENTS WILL BE ASSESSED FOR FAILURE TO RETURN THIS BOOK ON THE DATE DUE. THE PENALTY WILL INCREASE TO 80 CENTS ON THE FOURTH DAY AND TO Sl.OO ON THE SEVENTH DAY OVERDUE. SEP 10 19o: MU 28/333 FEB 18 1934 MAR 28 1934 MAY 4 1934 MAR 18 1936 JUN 1 I LD 21-2Um-6,'312 FEB J MAR i